Cheaper Than Paper

Plex Media Center for Linux or The Triumph of the Whim

2011-12-05T11:36:00.001-08:00

A couple of years ago, I started using a great fork of the XBMC media center called Plex. It was (and is) great but, unfortunately, it was only available for OSX, and later for Windows. Recently the server piece of the project was ported to Linux and there was much rejoicing (including mine). Add to that Android and iOS clients which are very good, and you're looking at really impressive system for serving and viewing your media both locally and to remote and even mobile clients.

Shortly after switching to the Linux version of the server, I started wondering how hard it would be to get the Plex Media Center client building on Linux. Now, normally when I have these kind of thoughts I go and sit down and have a bourbon Manhattan and they sort of go away. Not this time, though. This time I wound up chatting with Elan Feingold, the guy behind Plex. Elan encouraged me to take a crack at it and promised to assist where he could. Like a fool, I decided to give it a shot.

That was about a month ago. I grabbed the source and started hacking. And it started crashing. And crashing. And crashing. Elan was as good as his word and with help from him and a lot of cheering from various other folks, we now have a fork of Plex which will build on Linux (if you have all the right libraries, headers and tools installed, and sacrifice a chicken to Linus Torvalds). There are bugs, and if you elect to try using this client you will find them, I promise. You may find the project is the next best thing to impossible for you to build. You may decide that Gary is a douche who misled you. So it goes.

If you are interested in participating, head over to https://github.com/gewalker/plex-linux and check out the code. If you already have a github account you can check out the project by doing the following:

$ git clone git@github.com:gewalker/plex-linux.git
$ cd plex-linux
$ git submodule init
$ git submodule update

That will pull down the latest version of the code that built successfully for me. Take a look at README.plex-linux and install the packages for your distro if it's listed, and take a wild guess at what to install if it isn't. Then bootstrap, configure, and make (it's a big project, so you may want to make -j <however many concurrent jobs you feel safe with> instead as it will single-thread by default).

Run it. If you find bugs and can fix them, do this:

$ git branch yourbranchname
$ git checkout yourbranchname

Fix the code and push it to github, then send me a pull request for the "zoey" branch of plex-linux. I'll pull your code changes in, test and tweak, then push them into the laika branch which is our current integration head.

Personally, I'm having a ball with this one. It's been a lot of work at a time when I didn't particular need a lot of additional work, but it's been well worth it. If you think you can contribute and you'd like a killer media center platform on your Linux box, come check it out.

How to Fail at an Enterprise-level Tech Interview

2011-10-20T10:18:00.000-07:00

*Sarcasm on*

So, based on some recent experiences interviewing candidates for a job opening on the team I work with, I'm going to offer some clear advice for job seekers who strongly prefer to remain unemployed. I wouldn't have thought there was so much interest out there in being unemployed, but the anecdotal evidence available to me calls that assumption into question. Here we go:

The first step in failing at a tech interview is to prepare your resume. Enterprise level companies frequently list specific skillsets that are required for positions. These requirements are how they exclude you, so make sure your resume reflects them even if your personal skills do not. Specific strategies include listing every programming language you've heard of in your career. Do not be tempted to limit this to programming languages in which you are experienced, especially if there aren't any programming languages in which you are experienced. You might be concerned that if you list something like "UNIX Shell" or "bash" on your resume, that an interviewer such as myself will ask you what's wrong with this script:

for k in [1..4]
do
echo "number $k"
done

That's just not going to happen, I assure you. Similarly, if you don't actually know any Perl and list Perl on your resume, it won't result in you getting asked the output of this command:

perl -e 'my $message = "foobar\n";my $chmessage = chomp($message); print "$chmessage"'

Again, I understand your concern, but I can personally guarantee that this won't happen.

*Sarcasm off*

Seriously, if you want to get a job at this level, please don't waste my time. Don't put things on your resume to which you can't speak intelligently. The stupid, simple, 101-level examples above have repeatedly tripped up supposedly "highly qualified" job candidates. I am not opposed to hiring someone who is technically light if I think they're a good investment. I am firmly opposed to hiring bullshitters.

Google's Code of Conduct vs Google's Conduct

2011-08-26T11:10:00.000-07:00

Here's a gem Todd Vierling shared with me from the Google Code of Conduct (full text here). I've decided that, like the community standards this bears a good walking through and comparison with the Google+ names policy. Join us, won't you?

I. Serve Our Users

Our users value Google not only because we deliver great products and services, but because we hold ourselves to a higher standard in how we treat users and operate more generally. Keeping the following principles in mind will help us to maintain that high standard:

Yes, it certainly would. Please start doing so.

a. Integrity

Our reputation as a company that our users can trust is our most valuable asset, and it is up to all of us to make sure that we continually earn that trust. All of our communications and other interactions with our users should increase their trust in us.

Well, I certainly can't argue with that. Your reputation as someone your users can trust, not your customers, but your users is absolutely critical. Did no one get Vic and Bradley the memo during their on-boarding?

b. Usefulness

Our products, features and services should make Google more useful for all our users, whether they're searching, advertising or posting content, and whether they're large corporations or individuals. We have many different types of users, but one guiding principle: 'Is what we are offering useful?'

Good question. See, it seems like what you're recognizing here is that there are a lot of different use cases for your products and that you need to offer products that provide choices supportive of those use cases to the greatest degree possible. I have to wonder why you have decided to abandon this key principle in the case of people who don't want to conform to your very limited notion regarding how names are used in the real world (which is, in fact, not how names are used in the real world).

c. Privacy and Freedom of Expression

Always remember that we are asking users to trust us with their personal information. Preserving that trust requires that each of us respect and protect the privacy of that information. Our security procedures strictly limit access to and use of users' personal information. Know your responsibilities under these procedures, and access data only as authorized by them, our Privacy Policy and applicable local data protection laws.

Google is committed to advancing privacy and freedom of expression for our users around the world. Where user privacy and freedom of expression face government challenges, we seek to implement internationally recognized standards that respect those rights as we develop products, do business in diverse markets, and respond to government requests to access user information or remove user content. Contact Legal or Ethics and Compliance if you have questions on implementing these standards in connection with what you do at Google.

I don't know what to say about this. It just isn't true where Google+ is concerned. Instead, people who choose to exercise their freedom of expression and raise their voices about the failure to meet their reasonable expectations of privacy are being told that they should leave. I hope everyone at Google with the slightest scrap of character is justifiably ashamed of this.

d. Responsiveness

Part of being useful and honest is being responsive: We recognize relevant user feedback when we see it, and we do something about it. We take pride in responding to communications from our users, whether questions, problems or compliments. If something is broken, fix it.

Yes. Do this. Please. Oh, and while you're doing it...

e. Take Action

Any time you feel our users aren't being well-served, don't be bashful -- let someone in the company know about it. Continually improving our products and services takes all of us, and we're proud that Googlers champion our users and take the initiative to step forward when the interests of our users are at stake.

...figure out some way to make the fact that over 1000 Google employees did exactly what you tell them to do here did not impact your decision to move forward with this broken, ridiculous mess of a policy one iota. Then maybe you can find someone who understands this section of your code of conduct a bit better to run your social efforts.

Building the Bamboo Social Network

2011-08-24T14:51:00.000-07:00

You know, think what you like about +Robert Scoble, when he's right about something, he's right about it. Lately he's been pointing out what I consider to be among the most troubling aspects of the whole name policy: it may well represent a shift away from a data-driven Google. Allow me to explain.

A while back, Skud used a familiar term in an unfamiliar way and it really clicked with me. She said that Google was attempting to "cargo cult" Facebook. Now, if you don't know what a cargo cult is, I'll explain briefly. Cargo cults are a phenomenon seen in various isolated pre-industrial societies (notably on some Pacific islands). When these societies encountered industrialized people they rather quickly noticed several things:

1) Industrialized people built warehouses and docks and all manner of infrastructure.

2) After this happened, ships bearing cargoes of useful manufactured goods arrived at said docks, unloaded their goods, and put them into the warehouses.

"Well shit!" some clever lad among them said, "We can do that!" He was enthusiastic, too, and got his people on board with the idea.

And so they built warehouses and docks and what-have-you out of bamboo and thatch or whatever and waited for their ships to show up with their cargoes.

That's what Google is doing in the social space right now. Imagine that Google is an island, beautiful, rich in natural resources, flora, fauna, etc. The people are happy. They are, essentially, free. They don't have any particular enemies. They happen to like pork and seafood and fruit. They are, in a nutshell, living the good life by doing what they've always done. They're enjoying themselves and they feel pretty darned good about their society.

Along comes Facebook one day. They land on the island next door, we'll call it Social Island, get out and start building their docks and warehouses and weird-ass PHP to C code to exec compilers and whatnot. Ships arrive carrying cargoes of personal information and activity data. First a few, then more and more. Suddenly, almost overnight, Facebook's warehouses are bulging with some 750 million boxes of data.

Suddenly all those flowers and fruit, fish dinners and pina coladas don't look as pretty or taste as good as they used to for the folks who live on Google Island. They want all that social data. They're not happy any more because they don't have it. They could totally use that stuff, y'know?

And so they start building something that looks like the thing in question. Social Island has a warehouse? We need a warehouse. Social Island has a restrictive and unenforceable name policy? We need one of those too.

The problem with this is the same as the problem with a cargo cult--they have fundamentally misunderstood the relationship between what Facebook built and what Facebook has.

There's another aspect to all of this that bothers me a good bit more, actually. Google didn't make that island the happy place it was by copying what other people were doing. They did it by doing something different, something better, by innovating. There are good reasons to do that, especially when your competitors are so firmly established (hard to believe, I know, but plenty of people used to think that Google was never going to knock off established search vendors like Yahoo). Now they are trying to get social market share. Facebook has that market share. Google would like to have it.

Google+ has a lot of innovative features. It's got a great sharing model, multi-user video chat, excellent integration with Google photos, YouTube, Android devices, Google Maps and Latitude. It's full of innovation and original ideas and features...except for the names policy. The names policy sticks out like a sore thumb...it's been cargo culted from Facebook. It is, to coin a phrase I personally invented many years ago on QwestMUCK, a turd in the sugar bowl. Now a turd in a sugar bowl may get coated in sugar. It may no longer look like a turd. As soon as you put it in your coffee, however, the core difference between it and the surrounding sugar will become very readily apparent.

I have looked very hard for research that supports Google's name policy. I have asked others on either side of the issue to point me to any peer reviewed research which supports Google's name policy. I have found and been given nothing. The research which has been done and is readily found by even a mediocre search indicate that pseudonyms are either neutral or actually beneficial to the tone of an online community.

That brings me back to where I started. Google has long been data-driven. They allow the facts to shape their decisions rather than attempting to shape the facts to their decisions...until now. This, my friends, does not bode well. It sets a bad precedent for the company. The reality is that name policy or no name policy, Google+ isn't going to capture those 750 million boxes of data because the people who actually generate them are not, by and large, unhappy with Facebook. They aren't unhappy with Jersey Shore, USA Today, McDonald's, or the New York Yankees either. They aren't going to care about the policy. People who are unhappy with Facebook, however, will. Those are the people Google is alienating. Those are the people who will adopt a new and innovative social network and help Google make it into something the people on Facebook will want to use instead...if they are allowed to do so.

Food for thought.

Welcome to the Echo Chamber (re-posted from Google+)

2011-08-18T07:22:00.000-07:00

Google+: Welcome to the Echo Chamber

"Relatively speaking, there are right views and wrong views. But if we look more deeply we see that all views are wrong."--Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching

In the comment thread of this post from +Kee Hinckley,

https://plus.google.com/u/0/117903011098040166012/posts/2bmeTvoQ52i

+Robert Scoble made this comment:

"+Gary Walker right. Google's algorithm was written to only find names that LOOK fake. That's why SKUD got caught. SKUD doesn't look like a real name. Neither does Sai, which is why he has to explain on his bio why his name is actually a real name. I have collected 10,000 business cards in my journey through life and only three have a name that isn't a two-word name like "John Smith." So, first pass on the algorithm caught a few names that were real but weren't common. That isn't insulting, it's a bug. Fix the bug, but keep the policy."

No offense to Scoble (I appreciated his willingness to join in the discussion) but here's why that's wrong.

It's telling that Scoble mentioned his enviable collection of business cards. They are interesting little things and I know a lot of people who hang on to them. You gather them over a career in the industry and if you're active about it you can, like Scoble, gather a lot of them.

I responded to that comment by asking Robert how many of his 10,000-odd business cards had owners who failed to meet at least two of the following three criteria:

1. Owner is white.

2. Owner is male.

3. Owner is financially comfortable (what I said was "wealthy (or at least upper middle-class)" but this is cleaner).

Scoble chose not to answer that question in that thread. That's okay because unless Robert Scoble's collection of business cards is dramatically different from that of anyone else in the industry the answer is going to be something in between 25 and 10%. See, Scoble's business cards tell us exactly what the goal of the Google+ name policy really is: a social network that looks "right" to an industry suit.

Now, I'm an industry guy myself, and I'm sort of surprised I didn't recognize this sooner. On the face of it, this doesn't look like a really bad thing. After all, the technology industry, whether you're talking about mobile or big data, or cloud, or what-have-you is a pretty interesting, pretty exciting place to work. You meet weird people with challenging ideas, surprising talents, and even more surprising foibles. Or you do until you get to the VP level, anyway. At that point, real personalities start getting more and more sparse. The bigger the company, the greater the trend toward a kind of dull, Silicon Valley sameness. No, it's not all white, it's not all male, and it's not all wealthy...but it is almost all two of those out of three. You see the same people every day, collar shirts but no tie, blue jeans, manicure, ready smile. The beards, the tattoos, the odd t-shirts, the nerd grrrls, the queers-but-not-the-kind-of-queers-we-like-the-other-kind-of-queers, the odd haircuts, the all-night raiders, they are nowhere to be found.

Now that probably comforts some folks. It makes me sad.

You see, the great moments of my life, the times when I found out something new about myself, about my world, about what I really believe, have always come at times when I was thrust out of my comfort zone--when I had to confront my preconceptions, to sort and evaluate them, to throw away the ones that I could no longer reconcile with reality. I think this holds true for people generally.

That kind of self-confrontation cannot happen in an environment of uninterrupted sameness.

I opened this piece with a quote from Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Zen master. It is one of those elements of Zen that frequently bother people, usually translated as "No View." "No View" means that you recognize that all points of view are, inherently, incomplete. They are flawed. This includes, of necessity, your own point of view. It includes mine. It includes +Robert Scoble's. It includes +Vic Gundotra's. It includes the collective point of view of somewhere between 7000 and 9000 of Bob Scoble's business cards. To fix a service intended for hundreds of millions of users upon a point of view which can be summed up as "how the world looks to management in the tech industry" is, in light of that concept, not the best of choices.

It may work. It may not. Time will tell and honestly, it doesn't matter. It will never be as good as it could be. A social network built around a single point of view will not grow and develop. It will not create meaningful experiences. It will not engage the people who are already happy with Facebook. It will not draw in the people who are not. We want more than "good enough." In order to get that, Google is going to have to recognize that there must be room for other points of view. That 10,000 business cards are not a statistical universe which tells them anything about the market they are entering. That what is good for Scoble, what is good for +Vic Gundotra, isn't good enough. There is room here for everybody to be happy. We just have to start by seeing that none of us see completely--all of our views, each and every one of us, are wrong simply because they are views.

Let me say that again:

There is room here for everybody to be happy.

All we have to do is let go of our insistence on our own view. Does that mean the name policy has to change? Probably. It's my view that one of the implications of making everybody happy, making the room for all those other views, is that the name policy will have to change. I could be wrong. I'm still waiting for someone (looking at you here, Vic) to say anything about this issue.

Rooting your HTC Supersonic/Sprint EVO 4G with Gingerbread OTA

2011-08-16T08:32:00.000-07:00

Hallelujah! The wonderful folks at Unrevoked and alphaRev have added support for the stock Gingerbread (2.3.3/HBOOT 2.16.00001) version of the Sprint EVO 4G/HTC Supersonic to their mighty Revolutionary tool. You can now easily get S-off and root on your EVO 4G and flash whatever ROM you like.

Here's a quick walk-through of the rooting method on Linux (your mileage may vary if you're using Windows, I wouldn't know).

1) Open the back plate of your device and look under the battery. Write down your device's serial number. You will need it to create a beta key for the tool. If you don't want to provide your s/n, look around. There are some valid s/n's around that you can use for this.

2) Download the su package for the EVO here. Save it on your phone's SD card. If you want to flash a new rom (say, Cyanogenmod 7, it would be wise to download the associated files and put them on your SD card too, just to save time).

3. Go to http://revolutionary.io and download the tool. Unpack it somewhere on the system you want to run it from. When you fill out the download form you will be provided with a beta key. Copy it somewhere and keep it handy. You will need it when you run the tool.

4. In the phone's settings menu, go to applications, Development, and turn on USB debugging.

5. Set the phone's usb connection to "charge only" and plug it into the computer you want to use for the rooting. Do not use a hub as they will generally not work properly.

6. Run the revolutionary executable using root privileges. If you don't have root, you may be able to do this unprivileged by making various udev changes, but honestly, if you don't have root or sudo as root on your own Linux system, you need more help than I can provide here. If you're using someone else's Linux system, stop and build your own.

The executable will prompt you for your beta key. Provide it. Then sit back and watch the fun. Revolutionary will give you S-off and download and install a custom recovery image for you. Once that's done, you can backup your existing installation from recovery, install the su package (giving you root) and flash a custom rom to your heart's content.

The Psocial Network

2011-08-13T15:21:00.000-07:00

Google+ is a great idea: a social network that lets you build arbitrarily complex classifications of relationships with other users. The goal? To let you build social networks that resemble "real life." That's a powerful thing. Unfortunately, that goal is never going to come to pass because somewhere on the way from great idea to great product, somebody straightened his (and yes, I feel certain that this decision was made by a man) tie and said that he'd like it better if it made people use their real names.

Now, instead of a network that looks like real life, you have a network that looks like a version of real life in which you wear your driver's license on your shirt and announce your name to everyone you see. That is not, obviously, what real life is like, but that's what Google wants the social network to be. If you're interested in why, I think this makes for some fine reading.

But let's get back to how this change essentially makes it certain that Google+ isn't going to be the revolutionary game-changer it could be. I wrote a while back about the fact that the design of Google+ implies two specific features, neither of which are in the product. The first is strong identity. Whether you call it that (I like that personally) or "Validated Identity" or whatever else, it means that you have provided some kind of proof to Google of who you are and that Google has stored that information and attached it to your profile. Right now, Google is putting on a kind of Identity Theater in which they pretend to require valid identity documentation from a user if there is any kind of question about the validity of their profile. Anyone reading this blog knows by now that this is a long way from reality. The thing is, Google's not really equipped for the customer service load that doing this for real would involve, so instead of simply being honest with us, they've put up a pointless smoke screen, obviously intending to prop things up later...if later ever comes.

The second is strong privacy. Strong privacy is exactly what it sounds like: I control what information I share with all parties. So far, Google's record on privacy with Google+ is pretty poor. Obviously the biggest, noisiest issue that has come up is the so-called 'NymWars. There are others: gender privacy (which they fixed, quickly and correctly), and various issues with sharing information about your contacts with various systems, sharing granularity in Photos, etc.

Google+ needs these to make it what it is intended to be. There is, however, one other thing that's required and that is Flexible Names.

I don't necessarily mean pseudonyms here. They are a part of it, but not the whole. Possibly not even the most important part. Danah Boyd has already written a significant analysis of "real name" policies and how they relate to issues of power and privacy. I suggest reading that if you haven't done so already. The thing is, we all use a multiplicity of names in the course of our daily lives even if we don't use the internet, much less a social network, at all. The vast majority of those names are not our "wallet name." That is real life--you know, the thing Google+ says it wants to help you reproduce in a social network.

An example: I am not, universally, known as Gary Walker. Frankly, I prefer "Gary E. Walker," and that is how I sign my name and any official correspondence, papers, etc. To my immediate family and to everyone who knew me prior to late 1991, however, I am "Edward Walker."

My father is "Gary Walker" (although Gary isn't his first name), and to avoid confusion, I was called by my middle name until I went to college and it got to be too much of a hassle to explain to people that I went by "Edward." Eventually, I got to like being "Gary E. Walker" and I just stopped mentioning the whole "Edward" thing to people. Now, when my mother calls the house and my wife answers the phone, my mom doesn't ask for "Gary." That is still my father (although Google would insist that he is actually "James," a name I have never heard anyone call him in almost 4 decades). She asks for "Edward" which is my name as far as she is concerned.

Back that up a second...my name depends on who I'm talking to? Yeah. It does. Context alters identity just like it alters the kind of information you want to share. That's implicit in Circles. That's why the real name policy feels so spectacularly wrong.

Another example: How many people do you know who have an "anglo" name which they use with co-workers, or at school as well as a "real" name which is something the rank and file can't pronounce, but that their folks at home use exclusively? Google, apparently, has never met someone who goes by "Jeff" even though his real name is Kwon-Li or Aref, or Jumaane, because they haven't made any provision for that and have made it impossible to use the limited resources they have provided to address the issue.

So what you really have in real life is what I've decided to call a Psocial Network. A multi-leveled affair in which both the type of relationships and your identity vary from one set of contacts to another. That's what Google+ is supposed to be. I realize Vic Gundotra has said that it's the way the designer designed it. That sort of makes me wonder why Google is preventing that same designer from publishing his book on the subject.

Somebody straightened his tie. Somebody male. Somebody over 40. Somebody making more money than you or me or the very smart people who designed this system. I don't know who. I don't know when. I can smell the power-tie testosterone-soaked used-car-salesman stink of this 3000 miles from Mountain View, though. And remember, if you don't like it, don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out.

LET IT RAIN: Day 2

2011-08-11T08:30:00.000-07:00

This is a repost of a public post on Google+ which you can find here:

LET IT RAIN: Day 2

Well, another day dawns and the weather over beautiful Mountain View is looking rainier than ever.

For those late to the party, a brief review of what we are doing and how you can help:

1) In response to Google's suspension of Rainyday Superstar's profile (yet again), we have decided to begin protesting the ridiculous, unenforceable "Community" standards by changing our names. This may result in suspension of our profiles and if that happens, it happens. This issue is not going away and neither are we.

2) If you wish to participate in this aspect of the protest, just change your name. Feel free to follow and share material from anyone else involved. Some key people to be aware of:

aka Skud

I know I haven't mentioned everyone here. If I haven't it's not because I don't appreciate you, it's because I'm writing this off the top of my head.

You'll notice that quite a few of those people haven't changed their names. That's fine. You don't *have* to do that to have an impact, and some of the driving forces behind this effort are people who aren't engaged in this part of the protest. It's a choice and it's your choice. If you want to be involved and don't want to change your profile name, here are some things you can do:

1) Be vocal--remember that speaking up carries with it responsibilities (like all freedoms). Be civil. We are asking for change, not insulting people. Let's leave the insults and obnoxious trolling to the "Real" name crowd. They're better at it anyway.

2) Spread the word. Don't just talk about this on Google+. If you blog, use your blog. If you use twitter, spread the word there. If you have connections with the media urge them to write about this issue. If you are in the industry, talk to people about how this policy will hurt the value of Google+. If you are a Google employee, well, I don't know what to tell you. I know you're out there. I've spoken to some of you. My recommendation would be to keep a low profile during this--you aren't evil and neither is Google. You're just mired in a bad decision stemming from a serious error in judgement.

3) Create. One thing that is certain is that all creative people have an opinion about issues of freedom of expression. If you can create images, videos, music, or writing about this issue, do so (and then see 2 above). If you're doing that and I'm not following you already, let me know in comments or by email from my profile--I will circle you and help to spread what you've done.

4) DO NOT GIVE UP. We are in this for the long haul. We are committed. We say that we will not be satisfied with a Google+ which is so good in so many ways and so critically flawed in this one. We are not content to leave it behind. This is not the bastard outgrowth of some crap web page for rich kids at Harvard. This is the system which will, I believe, become the social network of record. We are not going to quietly allow that resource with all the potential it represents to be a place where freedom is not respected to the greatest degree possible. We will not go away. We will not shut up. Google will either fix this problem to our satisfaction or we will continue our efforts until the gravity of this error sticks to those who have made it.

Find your voice.
Own your name.
LET IT RAIN

Bringing Rain to the Cloud

2011-08-10T10:12:00.001-07:00

This is something I posted on G+ a little while ago. It is a response to the "You know if you get suspended you'll lose...blah, blah, blah" comments this has generated.

A brief word that I hope won't offend anyone.

I am not doing this because I want my profile suspended, or because I don't care if it is. If Google decided to get rid of me over the activities of the last few days, it would have a significant impact on me. Google provides my primary email address which I have used for almost a decade. Google hosts my blog. Google provides my photo storage and sharing. Google provides my voicemail as I use Google voice integration with my Android phone.

These things are at risk for me. I understand that they are at risk for you too. Ask yourself, "Are these things more important to me than my principles?"

If they aren't, change your name. It's a risk. It's drawing a big target on your chest.

So what?

If you are on the sidelines you aren't in the game, folks. You won't get anything you want without risk. You won't get it from just one or two people taking that risk.

You are free to choose. That's what this is all about.

Choose.

Announcement of Planned Protest Activity on G+

2011-08-10T07:35:00.000-07:00

I am organizing a name-change protest on Google+ in response to the fact that Rainyday Superstar, an important member of the Google Buzz community has been suspended for a second time for choosing to use the name by which she is most commonly known on the service. Details at Rainy's blog.

I have posted on Google+ about this but I am repeating it here and will be sending this out via Twitter as well.

Protest Details
At noon EDT/09:00 PDT/16:00 UTC persons participating in the protest will change the first name on their profiles to "Rainyday." I do not know if the 30-day waiting period between name changes is being enforced yet and honestly, I don't care. Fortes fortuna adiuvat! If you aren't willing to risk being stuck with "Rainyday" as your first name on G+ for a month, this is probably not something you want to participate in.

A Firsthand Examination of the Google+ Profile Reporting Process

2011-08-09T09:58:00.000-07:00

Late last week, everyone was surprised to learn that Blake Ross, co-founder of Firefox and a product director at Facebook had his Google+ account suspended. Now Blake Ross' name is obviously not in violation of any of the Google+ name standards, but the general assumption appeared to be that his account had been suspended by an automated process (despite the fact that there are quite a few other users with the same name who haven't been). I am, by nature a suspicious sort, so I decided to find out how hard it is to get an account with a legitimate name suspended.

In order to do this, I enlisted a small but dedicated cadre of similarly interested folks. Their help is greatly appreciated, but I will not be naming any of them. While I consider what I did to be a legitimate exploration of an essentially undocumented process, Google may not feel that way about it and would be within their rights to suspend my account as a result of this. I would prefer that any such response fall on me, personally, rather than on any of the otherwise innocent individuals who gave me some assistance in pulling this off.

My goal was to determine a few things, namely:

1) How hard is it to get an account with a legitimate name suspended if that's what you want to do?

2) What actually happens when an account is reported? What evidence needs to be provided?

3) What safeguards are in place to insure that the reporting system isn't abused?

In order to find these things out, I decided to take the following steps documenting the process throughout:

1) Create a bogus account with the same first and last name as my own account. This is hardly unusual. I am the original Gary Walker on Google+, but I am not (as a quick people search will indicate) the only Gary Walker on Google+.

2) Fill out a simple profile for the account with no actual PII. Simple enough. Accounts require some fields to be filled out, but they don't have to have anything useful or realistic in them.

3) Have the account reported, initially as a "Fake Profile" and then if no action resulted, for "Impersonation."

4) Attempt to have the account re-instated.

So without further ado, here is the my dive into the black box of Google's profile reporting and suspension process.

Part 1: The Setup
I wanted to create a profile that was completely devoid of any kind of indication of ill-will or incriminating activity. With this in mind I created a new, non-Google email account and had an accomplice send me an invite to Google+. We are all familiar with the requisite hoops that have to be jumped through in order to do this. They were overcome in exactly the fashion you would expect.

Once the account was created, I filled out this profile:

My bogus profile. Hey look! That cat is riding an invisible bike!

The profile contained no information capable of identifying the dummy user as anyone, much less as me. He's just another schlub on G+--you don't know where he is, who he is. Essentially the only useful things which could be gleaned from this profile are that the name is "Gary Walker" and this user, like so many, many others, myself included, enjoys funny pictures of cats. This profile made a total of one public post consisting of the famous LOLcat image from which the profile picture is taken. This profile is, however, obviously not me as you can see here:

Part 2: The Reportening

Now that I had a completely innocuous, completely non-infringing account created, it was necessary to have that account reported. On August 4, 2011, we did just that. A total of three fellow travelers reported the profile as a "Fake Profile." We decided to let that sit overnight and see what happened.

And we waited.

And absolutely nothing happened.

Please don't think I'm critical of that. In my opinion that's exactly the result that three "Fake Profile" reports on a non-infringing profile should produce.

The next day, August 5th, I decided to up the ante and report the profile for "Impersonation." That's not me, Gary Walker, that's some other Gary Walker trying to steal my Google+'ly thunder! I won't stand for it. I decided to make it even more sketchy by changing the dummy account's profile pic to my own "Keep Calm and Post Cats" one.

This is the point at which I learned something very interesting. If you report a profile for impersonation, you are required to submit a scan of a photo ID. Here's the form:

That's reasonable and quite proper. I'm not particularly fond of the idea of submitting a copy of my driver's license to Google, however (at least not unless there's some actual value add to be gained by doing so). Here's what I gave them instead:

Aloha, friends!

Now, if this "driver's license" looks familiar, it should. If it doesn't, you should probably watch Superbad some time. I went well out of my way to make this an obvious fake. My picture isn't aligned correctly, it isn't scaled correctly. The font on my name doesn't match the rest of the ID, etc. etc. Entirely aside from that, I don't live in Hawaii. About the only way to make it more obvious would have been to leave the "McLovin" signature on it.

Approximately 2 hrs later, I received the following email:

profiles-support@google.com to me

Thanks for your report. Based on the information provided, we've

determined that there may be legitimate reason to block this profile. The

profile you reported has been blocked and will no longer appear in search

results. To proceed with this claim, we are contacting the account owner

to allow them to verify their identity. If they are able to do so, the

profile may become unblocked.

Sincerely,

Name Removed

The Google Profiles Support Team

About the same time, my dummy profile's email received this missive:

Hi,
We've received a report indicating that your profile on Google is in
violation of our policies. We've temporarily blocked your profile and
removed it from search results. In order to remove the block on your
profile, we need to verify that your identity matches the one described on
the profile. Please fill out the form at
https://www.google.com/support/accounts/bin/request.py?contact_type=identity_verification

While your profile is blocked, only you will be able to see it, but we
won't delete any information you've included. Once we've verified your
identity, we'll make your profile visible again. Please note that Google
needs this document only for verification purposes. We will not retain or
share any of the information given. Feel free to blur or block out any
government identifying numbers. We only need the name and photo on the
identification provided.

Sincerely,
Name Removed
The Google Profiles Support Team

That was it. All it took was the provision of a (very) fake ID scan to have an account suspended.

I decided to fill out the reinstatement form which, as the email indicated requires a photo ID scan to be submitted. I figured, let's find out just how pointless this process is, so I sent them this:

You will notice that in addition to all of the obvious problems with the earlier "scan" this one has replaced a legitimate picture of me with the mug shot of Arizona multiple murderer, Jared Loughner. I've also changed the last digit of the ID number to an "8."

I submitted that ID about 30 minutes after the account was suspended on August 5th. The account was re-instated at some point after that without any notification to me. Seriously, Google? Seriously? I sent you a famously fake ID with a spree killer's picture and you turned the thing back on? I honestly don't know what to say about that. Are you asking for the scans for fun? Do you look at them at all? I am very disappointed.

Part 3: Did you learn anything from your experience, Father Google? Ah...no, Ted.
Time to revisit my goals:

1) How hard is it to get an account with a legitimate name suspended if it is your intention to do so?

Not very. Not at all. I was able to get an account with no particular infringing information or activity suspended by providing a GIMP'ed version of the McLovin ID from Superbad. I was able to get the same account reactivated with a picture of a mass murderer. In the grand interwebs vernacular, What. The. Fuck? That said, I have to credit Google with the fact that it did require me to take such an action in order to get the account suspended. This leads me to believe that people using pseudonyms which don't step on the various community standards who have been suspended may well have either a) been suspended due to reasons other than or in addition to their names or b) have been reported by other users.

2) What happens when a profile is reported?
3) What safeguards are in place to prevent the system from being abused?

Depends on what it's reported for. I was very pleased to see that there is a difference in the reporting mechanism for "Impersonation" vs "Fake Profile." Unfortunately, that difference is what is known in the industry as "Security Theater." It does not, actually, hew to any kind of reasonable standard for validation. Are there "safeguards" against abuse in place? Yes. Of a sort. Are they adequate? No. Absolutely not. Is there any way to change that? I leave this as a question for Google to answer.

Google is trying to do the right thing here. They're trying to protect the validity of accounts, to prevent abuse, etc. I recognize and applaud them for making the effort. Alongside that recognition and applause, however, I have to point out that whatever process made the debacle I just described possible needs significant improvement.

I would make one final observation. Nothing that I have seen indicates that there is an automated process which suspends profiles whose names are "normal." Nothing. I do not say that there is no ban-bot. I say that if your name complies with the community standards, the ban-bot will not get you.

A Walk Through the Newly Clarified Google+ Community Standards

2011-08-08T16:01:00.000-07:00

There's an updated Google+ Community Standards today. I thought I'd take a moment and have a look-see what's there.

Use your full first and last name in a single language.
If you use your full name, you'll be able to connect with people you know and help them find you. Names that consist primarily of initials or those that include indications of membership in professional, educational, societal or religious entities, such as "Dr.", "Rev." or “JD” are not allowed in the first or last name fields. Names that include more than one language script aren’t allowed either.

Violation examples: Doctor Stan Livingston, Bill Smithwick DDS, Rev. Jim Copley, 蔡玉娴 Archer, S. P.

Well, that's interesting. I wonder how my various redneck acquaintances with first names like "Senator" or "Hunter" will do with that one? I can readily imagine how people who need to provide their names in more than one language will. The fact is, I understand why Google is doing this. The profiles don't support these things presently. I wish (and we'll come back to this again and again) that they weren't trying to solve a technical problem with a policy. That doesn't work. Never has, never will. People want to use titles and alphabet soup after their names? Add fields for that. People want to provide their name in Chinese so that their aunt Woo can read it and in Roman letters so their folks from work can read it too? Allow people to set names for multiple locales. Regardless, don't try to address this by policing what people put in the system. That worked fine when this system was internal to Google but there is no way it is going to continue to do so in the wider world. Quit screwing around and fix the real problem which is a technical limitation rather than a policy issue.

Put nicknames or pseudonyms in the Other Names field.
If you’re referred to by more than one name, only use the one that commonly identifies you, and place the rest in the “Other names” or “Nickname” section of your profile.

Violation examples: Timothy “TK” King, Jonathan Richards (JonnyBoy), PunkRockerSF

Sound advice. If you put other name forms there you will come up when people try to +tag you with them.

Avoid unusual characters in your name.
When you create your profile, our system will check the name you submitted for unusual characters. For example, numbers, symbols, and obscure punctuation are not supported.

Violation Example: John246 , ★★Shelley★★, J@SON W@T$ON, ‘Rachel Smith/

This is silly. First of all, it's wishful thinking. Secondly, it's prima facie absurd. Most importantly, however, it won't do anything to prevent people from using those characters. If that's what Google really wants (and while I cannot imagine why they want that other than someone in a tie somewhere decided that Google+ would look better if they kept out the l337speak) they should just prevent the use of those characters. Period. Who knows. They may do that already. I haven't tried. I maintain that the idea that there is a qualitative difference between two names, one of which contains symbols and numbers and one of which doesn't is ridiculous and making that position part of your public standards policy will only generate ridicule. Also, the "'Rachel Smith/" example looks like you're trying to prevent people from x-site exploiting you by asking nicely. That looks very, very dumb.

Your profile and name must represent one individual.
Google+ does not support profiles for couples or groups of people. Additionally, you cannot create a profile for a non-person entity such as a pet or business.

Violation examples: Jones Family, Jeremy & Mel Mason, Vegas the Dog, Brooklyn Bagels, Northern California Conservation Society

I have only one problem here. This discriminates against my American bulldog, Zoey. She has a facebook account (she has more friends than I do). All the other use cases they enumerate are fine by me--now if they'd just apply it to every SEO/social marketing consultant slob currently on the network solely to shill for their business. And frankly, if Google wants to make Google+ humans only, I have to respect that (and sneak Zoey in later after it's public and too big for them to check up on that).

Don't use the name of another individual.
Impersonation is a serious issue. Pretending to be someone else could cause your profile to be deleted. If someone is pretending to be you, go to their profile and click Report this profile.

You mean like the approximately 1500 people in the US who are also named "Gary Walker?" How can you tell? Answer: you can't. How is this going to be enforced? Is this going to be enforced? ORLY?

Name Changes
Please note that if you change your name, you won’t be able to change it again for 30 days.

HEY! It's a new feature! Nothing like this previously. Based on the name change protest that I and a number of other people engaged in earlier today, nothing like this is actually being enforced now. I wouldn't bet on things staying that way. I'm not opposed to this policy if and only if it is coupled with proper support for pseudonymous use of the service. It's there to try and limit abuse and I wholeheartedly support Google in that change...with the reservations already noted.

Names Appeals
If you've followed these guidelines but your name still isn’t being accepted by our system, please follow the on-screen instructions to submit your name for review. The typical review process takes a few days. You may also want to review our Content Policy.

Nothing new here.

Google+ Profile Suspension and Other Google Services
If your profile is suspended, you will not be able to make full use of Google services that require an active profile such as Google+, Buzz, Reader and Picasa. This will not prevent you from using other Google services, like Gmail. Your profile can be restored by editing your name and submitting an appeal that will be reviewed by our team, as directed by on-screen instructions.

Or here.

And then there's this closing statement:

We understand that your identity on Google+ is important to you, and our Name Policy may not be for everyone at this time. We’d hate to see you go, but if you choose to leave, make a copy of your Google+ data first. Then click here to leave Google+.

Glad to hear you understand that, Google. I wish you understood it sufficiently well to explain whether "may not be for everyone at this time" meant until you change or until we change. That would have been nice.

So, an assessment:

Google has done at least one thing right here. They have as many people, myself included, have repeatedly requested, eliminated the vagueness that was present in the previous terms. Now, at least, we can see clearly what we are dealing with.

What we are dealing with is still critically flawed, inadequate, and not to be borne.

On the other hand, getting this level of clarification has taken what? A few weeks? That's super-fast in lawyer time. I really wish somebody up high at Google would take their thumb out and tell us where things are going, but I guess I understand why they don't. They can't say anything meaningful without details and the details aren't ironed out yet--that doesn't mean I have to like it any more than Google "understand"ing about how people feel about pseudonyms means that they're going to do anything useful about it right now.

I will point out one other way to deal with this:

Google is telling you in no uncertain terms how to craft a pseudonym which will not violate the ToS. That may not be the pseudonym you want, granted. But there it is.

Privacy, strength, and the challenge facing Google

2011-07-25T16:13:00.000-07:00

I did promise that I'd write something about Google+. This is not that thing. This is something different which is Google+-related but, essentially, applies to any social network.

What does it mean for a social network to be strong? Is it strong if it is easy to monetize the social intelligence embedded in it? Is it strong if it has a lot of users? Is it strong if it produces interesting content? I think these are all aspects of it, but I want to posit something slightly different. A social network is strong based on whether or not it is fulfilling its potential and the degree to which that potential frees users (both those in the network and those monetizing it) to build and innovate using it.

That potential is going to be defined by the network's design. Facebook is strong. Sad, but true, it is currently fulfilling its potential, and it has given its commercial partners significant opportunities to innovate. Its utility to its rank and file users is less broad, but it gives them enough to keep them happy and retain them for its commercial customers. Twitter is strong. Twitter develops strength by being open, allowing whatever you can fit into 140 characters. If you are a broadcaster-type user, you can get a verified account and people can know that those 140 characters really came from Neil Gaiman or Wil Wheaton or whoever.

Now along comes Google+. Is Google+ strong? We don't know yet. What we do know is that Google+ will have bigger shoes to fill than either Facebook or Twitter. The potential of G+'s design is leaps and bounds ahead of anything else on the Internet, but that same potential will require much tougher choices in order to fulfill it.

For starters, we have to recognize that the differences between Google+ and its competitors are not merely cosmetic. We are, after all, talking about social media here. We can't ignore McLuhan. The medium is, at least to some degree, the message. The message of G+'s design is clearly one of individual privacy and control. Circles is not a gimmick. It is the implementation in software of a statement along the lines of "People are complicated. Relationships are complicated. Not all connections with other people are equal." That statement implies the need for strong, detailed privacy controls. Google+'s design makes it easy to produce rich public content or to directly interact with other people. That implies the need for identity verification. These two factors will define the scope of Google+'s potential and what must be done in order for it to be recognized.

That scope is broader than that of its competitors and, as I have said, will require the Google people to make some tough choices in order to realize it, choices which implement strong identity and strong privacy.

Strong identity means that I can, with a minimum of fuss, validate that I am who I say I am and that the network provider can maintain that validation. It means that vendors and advertisers can have more confidence in the targeting of their efforts. It means that people reading what I write can be confident (assuming they don't know me very well, obviously) in the source. It represents an enormous win for purposes of monetizing social intelligence. It represents a big step up in channel strength for content creators. It represents finally creating a real, palpable connection between the social network and the bodies behind it...something new and very, very powerful in the social media space if it can be accomplished.

Strong privacy means that I control my identity. It means that what name I use, who sees my information, who sees what I post and whether or not commercial partners have access to my information is under my control. It means a relationship between user, service provider, and 3rd parties which is based on consent rather than imposed simply because unfavorable terms of service allow it. That is a hard sell. Most 2nd rate commercial types attempting to make a buck off of the latest thing don't have the vision to recognize the value in privacy (and I'm not talking about people building anything meaningful here, but about the vultures who just tacked "social" into their consulting resumes last week). They can't see past the fact that privacy makes mining data so much more work. They aren't in this for the long run. They don't actually care about the health of the network--their assumption, presumably, that like MySpace, like Facebook sooner than you think, when this well runs dry, they'll move on to another. It is the Web 2.0 equivalent of slash and burn farming and like that practice, it is unsustainable.

That hard sell of strong privacy is a tough choice for a business to make. It means giving up a lot of control over how people use their product. It means giving people the option to significantly reduce the amount of information they are trading to the provider for the service--everybody hates shrinking their margins. It means that if I want to present myself to the world as "5n0ggl3r0tt3r 5m3gm4buns, |||" I can do so. It means that there is potential for abuse that is, if not greater than it would be with weaker privacy, more difficult to act upon decisively. Of course, the design also makes the scope of such abuse inherently limited--good design eliminating the need for coercive oversight.

Hard choices. A hard sell. And yet, the design of Google+ seems to clearly indicate that this is how the network is intended to function. I hope that Google's execs and engineers remain bold enough to bring the service's potential to fruition. Anything less would be a disservice to themselves and the vision they have demonstrated by the fact that it exists at all.

The Social Media Middle Class (and why Facebook won't hang on to them)

2011-07-08T06:09:00.000-07:00

So, after a brief risque interlude, I return to my topic of the moment.

Last time, I talked about why the "middle-class" of the social networks is important. I don't have numbers or evidence to support my opinions, and I am no information scientist, but this is a blog, not Nature, so get over it. Today I want to talk about social media outlets and how they create (and impose) class structures on their users.

First, I want to talk about Twitter, where the middle class is alive and well and why that is the case. Twitter is, beyond argument, very successful at attracting intellectual, media, and political celebrities. There is a strong, active upper class functioning on Twitter. You probably follow some of them, @neilhimself, @wilw, or @SteveMartinToGo. Twitter also has a fairly large, very active middle class of users. People who have a few hundred or a few thousand followers--or even fewer very influential followers. These are the people generating and amplifying a lot of the most interesting, most targeted content on Twitter. They aren't celebrities but they are known in their industry or community. Their opinions may not reach millions, but they reach the thousands who are engaged in making decisions about the areas in which they are influential--and there are a LOT more of them than there are of the top-end celebrities. The massively followed users are a legitimate draw (and many of them produce content which is solid gold--look at Wil Wheaton) but they are not the value proposition for Twitter. The value in Twitter is in the active, engaging conversations taking place in the broad middle ground--generating, shaping, and driving opinion in dozens of important areas.

More interestingly, Twitter does this without providing anything in the way of rich media. The essence of Twitter is its simplicity. Content published on Twitter is 140 characters or it is a link to somewhere else. That seems like a restraint, but it is, in fact, the opposite. By not providing rich media, extended services, applications, or any other frills, Twitter frees the content creators to use whatever they like. Publish your blog where and how you want. Host your photos where and how you want. Twitter will neither assist you in doing so nor impose any kind of restriction on you. Just make sure you keep the title short enough to fit in the link.

Facebook is a bit different, to say the least. Facebook has an active celebrity class. People friend celebs or like their pages and get the associated updates in their feed. Facebook has a very active "crowd" class (mainly because I can't bring myself to call them the lower class or just morlocks or something). These are people who maintain a pool of connections with friends and family and get little to no amplification outside of their sphere of acquaintances. Facebook seems to be missing a strong middle class, however. At best, some of Twitter's middle class will cross-post there in order to reach specific users, but the fact is that all of the players are somewhere else. They all have a Facebook account, but they don't care about it.

Here's why: Facebook wants to retain control of how you use Facebook. Wanna host pictures? Host 'em on Facebook. Wanna start a blog? Post it on Facebook--&c., &c. Creative people, as a rule, don't like this kind of lock-in (uncreative people don't care, but they don't produce content that you or I care about). Given the quality of the tools Facebook is providing for doing interesting content creation, you could hardly blame them if they avoided the platform on principle, but I suspect that for most people the fact that they are stuck in Facebook's controlled environment is a bigger turnoff than Facebook's mediocre UI. Facebook doesn't have a middle class to speak of because Facebook is designed and operated in a way which is anathema to the people who make up that middle class.

So, what is the lesson here? Control creates class disparity--a small, influential upper class producing a relatively small amount of content targeted at the broadest possible audience, and a huge, consuming lower class, and no middle class to speak of. Openness doesn't eliminate the upper class, and it doesn't eliminate the lower class either. There are still legions of tweens following Justin Bieber's tweets, I'm sure. What it does differently is foster the growth of a large, active middle class who create, and disseminate enormous amounts of highly targeted content. Facebook is more akin to a television network than what anyone paying close attention would call a social network.

Next time: I'm going to come up with something to say about Google+. Probably something stupid.

My talent is wasted on spambots...

2011-07-07T10:34:00.000-07:00

1:26:15 PM xoerinox32: hey

1:26:36 PM Gary Walker: Hello.

1:27:08 PM xoerinox32: hi-yo i saw you on my buddie list and wanted to say hi..... have we talked before??

1:27:22 PM Gary Walker: Not that I'm aware of.

1:28:03 PM xoerinox32: ah sorry bout that must be the blonde in me kicking in i guess lolz.... what are you doing though??

1:28:21 PM Gary Walker: Well, I'm just gutting a hog at the moment.

1:28:28 PM Gary Walker: You caught me on my mobile.

1:28:38 PM xoerinox32: that's cool i just got home from the gym a little bit ago

1:28:44 PM Gary Walker: Cool.

1:28:54 PM xoerinox32: i don't know what it is but i always get so horny after i get out of the shower.... you ever get like that??

1:29:03 PM Gary Walker: Not so much the shower.

1:29:16 PM Gary Walker: But covered in pig blood like I am right now…that's a turn on.

1:29:19 PM Gary Walker: That do it for you?

1:29:20 PM xoerinox32: ah well... i was just typing here in my towel about to have some fun

1:29:34 PM xoerinox32: wanna cum watch?????

1:29:45 PM Gary Walker: Hmmm. ARe you slaughtering a hog?

1:30:01 PM xoerinox32: awesome!!!!! http://stupidpronspamlinkfullofvirii.com ok click the gold join FREE it's realllly quick you just make a name so you can join and it doesn't cost a thing

The In-betweeners

2011-07-07T01:00:00.000-07:00

Social media outlets such as Twitter are, as anybody affiliated with the industry will tell you, largely celebrity-driven. We follow people of interest, people of importance, people about whom we have some kind of curiosity, etc. We follow movers and shakers. Their communications get amplified many times, twitterers blithely pumping them on down the wire like so many ethernet hubs. This is normal and it's perfectly healthy. There are people who are more interesting than others and it's hardly surprising that they gather more mindshare in networks where being interesting is key.

These, however, are not the people who make Twitter or Facebook, or Google+ or what have you happen. The people who make the networks happen, who give the networks something to sell to advertisers, who create any actual monetary value for social networks are what I like to call social media's middle-class. It's easy enough to find out if you qualify. Just log into klout.com and check your score. 30-60? Yep. You're in here with us. Bonus points if Klout has determined that you are influential about something that you have no actual influence about.

It's this broad, active middle class that provides the eyes for the advertising, generates much of the content, and facilitates moving the content generated up in the social stratosphere down to the lower echelons where they're just learning how to use the social network. I wonder do the social media suits realize this? They should. Eventually they're going to have to.

Regardless, I like being middle-class. It suits me just fine. If you're part of the social middle-class, I say, get out there and enjoy it.

A Quick Review of the New Nook Touch

2011-06-18T06:31:00.000-07:00

I've had the new Nook for about a week now, and I'm ready to talk about it.

The new Nook is a fantastic bit of hardware.

Design:
I love the design of the new Nook. It has always felt ass-backwards to me that the Kindle, which is supposed to essentially be a book, has a keyboard on it. Something about it has always shouted "Commodore PET" to me. The Nook, on the other hand, barely has buttons at all. Its lines are clean, the slightly rubberized case materials feel good to the hand, and it is less tall (and more hip-pocket friendly) than any other 6" display reader I've seen. The simplicity and practicality of the design extends to the accessories as well. Nook covers have a small, plastic pressure clip to hold the device in the book. It works flawlessly and is a lot less ugly than the various elastics, windowed sleeves, etc. that define the world of Kindle covers. It's also a good point to note the Nook's easy ambidexterity. Read right to left? The indentations for the cover clips are mirrored on the device so it can emulate a right or left-opening book in the cover. There are duplicate page-turning controls, as is common, but more importantly, the touchscreen interface pretty much eliminates any kind of handedness bias in the device. In a nutshell, the Nook oozes good, functional design. If it and the Kindle were small cars, the Nook would would be a Mazda 3 MazdaSpeed edition, and the Kindle would be a Chevy Aveo. They will both get you where you're going, but one is slick and satisfying, the other is ugly and clunky.

Display:
The eInk Pearl display is superb. Reading on this generation of eInk will really make you wonder how on earth anyone uses LCD based displays for reading. In my opinion the whole point of an ebook reader is to approach, as nearly as possible, the experience of reading printed paper. eInk has come a long way in reproducing that experience. In dimmer and lower color temp lighting the background takes on a bit of a greenish caste, but it is still clear with excellent contrast and very little eye strain. In bright light, the contrast is clearly comparable to good newsprint. In natural and full-spectrum light the display really shines. The background becomes an extremely pale silver without glare. If anything, the eInk display is easier on the eyes in bright light than "bright white" paper. Unlike some previous touchscreen eInk devices, the anti-glare coating on the Pearl display is superb and effective.

Guts:
The Nook is based on an 800MHz TI OMAP-3 series ARM-A8 processor. The A8 "Cortex"series devices are dramatically higher in performance than their predecessors--the architecture processes twice as many instructions per clock cycle as the ARM-11 parts and you really feel it in the responsiveness of the device. My old Sony PRS-600 had a 532MHz ARM-11 core (same as the 3rd gen Kindle) and a much slower display, but I frequently had to wait through multiple display refreshes before the device would process and register a keypress while typing. With the Nook, the display (which is several times faster than the old one) cannot refresh fast enough to keep up with the device's output while I am typing--the Nook has processor to burn and it really shows. The device feels brisk and responsive which is somehow unsettling on an eInk reader, but I have a strong suspicion I can get used to it. :)

Software:
The Nook is built on the very capable Android 2.1 (Eclair) platform. There is very little not to like about the unaltered operating environment. It does the whole eReader job pretty perfectly and the touchscreen based navigation and reading controls are excellent. It is to be sincerely hoped that B&N opens up the device to running selected applications optimized for the eInk display sooner rather than later. The horsepower of the Nook's beefy cpu is just screaming to be exploited. Rooting the new Nook is obnoxiously easy, and popular applications such as ADW Launcher, Seesmic (YAY!) and the Kindle app for Android (why, exactly would you buy a Kindle, again?) run very well, although they are poorly optimized for the display. Visuals which depend on color for contrast tend to do poorly in greyscale and the Nook display strongly prefers plain white backgrounds to the slightly tinted ones which are more common on apps for LCD displays (since white backgrounds on backlit devices are hard on the eyes). Rooting the device is not my preferred solution. I'd much rather (see my previous blog post) have B&N open up the platform and encourage developers to optimize apps for the device. Regardless, if your interests run toward a reader which can do it all and you're not afraid to tinker a bit, it is clear that the Nook is going to be a very modifiable device. If you're just interested in reading books, the Nook is already there and I can't really think of a significant way to improve on its implementation of that functionality.

Summary:
If you are in the market for an eInk reader, this is the one I would buy (obviously). I think it has enormous potential to develop as a product and it is already very good at its core functionality. If B&N handles this product correctly, it can be the turnaround for their place in the market. If they don't, it's still an excellent product and they are to be commended on the quality of it.

An Open Letter to Barnes & Noble

2011-06-17T16:57:00.001-07:00

Dear B&N,

You asked me what I would change about my new Nook. Honestly, the Nook doesn't need to change so much as your approach to it and us does. It is a brilliantly designed, beautifully executed piece of hardware. It is a superb reader--now let me use it to read my way. I read more blogs and feeds than I do newspapers and magazines. I live in the flow of social media. You have built this device on Android (good call)--let me exploit that. Make it possible (or, preferably, easy) for me to find and install (and, oh yes, develop and market) apps for the Nook. Imagine a web browser, RSS reader, a social media client such as Seesmic added to the device's feature set. Just those additions would make a dramatic change in the device's potential. It is already a great ebook reader, but if I could read my blogs and newsfeeds, update my social feeds, and use a functional web browser this device would go from desirable to essential in the mobile device hierarchy.

I realize I could get that functionality by rooting my nook--in fact I plan to do so later this evening--but I don't want to do that. I would much rather access the full potential of this device within the parameters established by you as the vendor. I know this business and I assure you that adding even those basic, text/reading-focused apps would catapult this reader to a level of popularity you can barely imagine. You would have a true Kindle killer on your hands--the kind of product that saves companies. This could be your iMac, your Wii, your springboard to the kind of brand identity that changes the game. But you have to trust us. You have to give us, the end users the power to find amazing, unforeseen ways to use this machine. If you trust us, if you give us control, we will discover more reasons for people to want to own a Nook than you can possibly imagine or ever discover on your own. There are a lot more of us than there are of you. If you treat that as an opportunity rather than a challenge you can transform your business, your place in the market and your future. Think about it.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPod

The Devil's Dick or What I Did On My Summer Vacation (part 3)

2011-06-16T20:08:00.000-07:00

Blah blah, poop and such content, blah, weird shit, blah, blah blah. You get the point.

So here is where things start to get weird. It's the evening of my second day in the hospital. I have not slept in roughly 84 hours. I am pumped full of broad-spectrum antibiotics, and I have a drain hanging out of a hole in my gut that I have to call the nurse about every 4-6 hours to empty into a specimen cup. I am as tired as I have ever been in my life, but I remain unable to sleep. Possibly this is due to the pain meds which currently consist of percocet (which is a combination of tylenol and oxycodone) and dilaudid (see part 1) along with the similarly aforementioned Tordol for fever and inflammation.

I lay in the bed, with all of the machines whirring and buzzing and rattling around me, and stared at the ceiling. I closed my eyes...and that was when things became truly bizarre. As soon as I closed my eyes, it was like I had switched on a film inside my head. I don't know what lucid dreaming actually is, but I kind of think it has to be like what was happening to me. It felt like I had a second set of eyes which were a couple of inches up on my forehead from my real eyes and I was simultaneously seeing both the featureless black from my closed eyelids, and a completely different, completely real set of images from these new, other eyes. Take a photograph and place it a few inches from your face so that it covers the view of one of your eyes. Your focus flickers back and forth between the two images, sometimes one is dominant, sometimes the other, sometimes you perceive a mixture of both inputs. That is, essentially, what happened to me, on and off, for the next nine hours or so. I wanted to sleep. I positively lusted after sleep. I wanted to sleep so badly I cried when I didn't.

Instead of sleeping, however, I had the waking dreams playing non-stop whenever I closed my eyes like some kind of devilish projector aimed at the inside of my skull. I want to say, before relating some of the things I saw, that I hope nobody reading this will judge me by the content. I could skip this, but I have set a goal of relating my experience honestly and completely, and this was a fairly profound part of it. I don't really know what to call the things I saw--closed-eye hallucinations, waking dreams, whatever--bear in mind that I was conscious and awake while this was happening. If I opened my eyes, they retreated to the background so thoroughly they were hard to notice. If I closed my eyes, the snapped into focus immediately. They would persist for some length of time--I have no idea how long, then subside. Then, after a while, a new vision would begin, focused when my eyes were closed, but always running in the background if they weren't. Most of them had an auditory component which never retreated quite as fully as the visual when my eyes were open. Here is a summary of what I remember of their content:

First Dream - Bad Babies
In a lot of ways I wish the Bad Babies had not been the initial vision. Frankly, I sincerely wish I hadn't seen it at all, as I am unable to actually forget it, and I did not want to know that anything like this was in my subconscious. The vision began in a darkened, room of white tile floors and walls. There were round lights in the ceiling with ridged, frosted glass fixtures. They glowed from within dimly, tinged violet and teal, like mercury lamps that haven't warmed up yet, no white light, only their sickly haloes. They flickered and cast shadows across the room. I walked through the room with it's flickering shadows into another similar chamber lined with shower stalls. This is a locker room or shower room. It's very like the shower room from my gym only lit by foxfires. As I walk through the room of shower stalls I notice that the floor is wet, covered with opaque, black liquid, like thin, black paint has spilled out and filled the room. There is a sound of dripping from the shower heads in the stalls, and I turn to look at one. I catch sight of a person on the floor in the far corner. The light's dim and tricky, but it looks like an old man, naked, hairy, wrinkled and potbellied, slumped into a sitting position in the corner, his legs splayed apart. There are droplets of the black paint that covers the floor (it must be half an inch deep at least) sticking to and matting his hairy legs where they have splashed in it as he sat down. There is a gym towel with the black paint splattered on it in places draped over his head the way the old men sit in the steam room and breathe in the heat and moisture. The light is tricky, it looks like there's something moving behind the old man. There is something. It's a baby, and it crawls out from behind him, splashing in the black paint. The baby is naked--it's a boy with fine light hair, blond or white, on it's too-big head--he's not a newborn, he's the size of my nephew Patrick--he's a crawler. He crawls along and lifts his torso up on the old man's potbelly. The old man doesn't move. I realize he's dead and I start to shiver uncontrollably. The baby turns and looks at me. His eyes are wrong. They are black and watery, like melting pitch. He opens his mouth and it is full of shark's teeth. Two rows of them. The mouth opens too far, like a snake's mouth and the muscles along his jaw and neck ripple obscenely. My bladder aches profoundly. I need to piss, I want to vomit. Most of all I want to run but I am frozen in place. I remember that I'm awake in the hospital bed. I want to open my eyes and make this stop and I can't. I hear and feel more babies coming out of the shower stalls. They brush past me, and I can feel their hands on my legs. They feel like babies' hands, feather soft with tiny, slick fingernails, but they aren't warm. They're cold and I'm cold and I'm shivering and I'm naked and it isn't black paint they are crawling through, it's just the violet and sea-green sick-light making it look black, but it's red and now like a switch has been thrown I can smell it, copper and salt, and aspic, and the first baby fits his obtusely opened mouth against the old man's belly, it's firm and pale as a beached fish, green-gray in the bad light and the baby's head snatches back and up faster than babies can move and the shark teeth rip into the body and the baby yanks away a huge mouthful of meat and viscera, jerking it back into a maw that can't be there like a shark and the other babies are coming and they crawl past me and I finally get my eyes to open and I don't have to see them taking the old man apart. I don't have to see what's under the towel. I hear it, at the edge of my perception, but thank God I don't actually have to see it.

Once my eyes were open again and I didn't have to see the Bad Babies (and the light was on, and I'd gone to the bathroom and looked in the shower and my blood pressure came back down), I felt a lot better. If I made sure to only blink quickly, I didn't actually have to see any more of the Bad Babies--although whatever noxious part of my hindbrain came up with them was by no means finished--the Bad Babies show kept going for at least half an hour after I was able to tear myself away from it and not see it any more. I still heard it occasionally, and once closed my eyes tightly to see if it was over yet (it wasn't). Finally, I didn't hear anything else.

I was going to write about more than this tonight, but I don't have the stomach for it any more (no pun intended). The problem with the Bad Babies is that they haven't faded like a nightmare would. I can still walk through every moment up until I got my eyelids to open in perfect detail. It isn't vague, and it isn't unreal. Thinking about it still makes me want to piss and vomit and run away. I'll do some more of this tomorrow. Thankfully, the other dreams are pretty much entirely unlike the Bad Babies. Honestly, that's just as well. If my psyche had had anything worse to toss up, I don't think I could live with myself.

War powers...

2011-06-16T05:16:00.001-07:00

I am not in the habit of making political statements (aside from jokes) here. I feel obliged to speak on this, however. The Obama administration's position that our direct military involvement in Libya's ongoing civil war falls outside the scope of congressional oversight under the War Powers of the President act is as gross an abuse of the executive power as anything the Bush administration ever considered. Kudos to Dennis Kucinich (I seriously can't believe I just typed that) and the other Democrats bold and principled enough to buck their party in recognition of the need to hold the administration accountable. I wish we had seen more similar principle from the Republicans during Bush's tenure.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

The Devil's Dick or What I Did On My Summer Vacation (part 2)

2011-06-15T22:10:00.000-07:00

A brief warning to the mild of temperament: This post contains gross crap about medicine and bodily functions, some of which is simply nasty, some of only prurient interest (if that). I will talk about pee-pee, and poo-poo, and pootie-gas. I will probably use considerably less amusing terms when doing so. If this is likely to offend you, I would suggest you read another blog. OSNews, or TechCrunch or something.

Now, my account of the details of my surgery is entirely secondhand. My memories of the event stop shortly after rolling into the OR, and getting onto the operating table. The last words I can remember saying are to the effect of, "That is a really big lamp." Not, obviously, my finest or most quotable moment. In retrospect, I think we can all be glad that these did not turn out to be my last words. My memories resume some time later on a bed in the surgical unit of the hospital with a nurse and my lovely wife in attendance. I had obviously been "conscious" for some time, but I don't recall anything I did or said up until asking what time it was. There was a clock in the room, but I was unable to focus on it (because, as I later realized, I wasn't wearing my glasses). I was disinclined to trust it anyway as there had been a clock on the wall of the ER which was stopped at 3:46:22 all day.

Eventually I learned that it was almost 21:00, that I could have ice chips, and that my nose was itching because I was wearing one of those oxygen hose nostril doohickeys. I also got my glasses back. I was asked if I was in pain. Oddly enough, I wasn't, particularly. The nurse nodded at me, asked me to tell her if that changed (which it did), and got me some ice chips. Now, if you've ever had surgery you know how I felt at this point--that is to say, like crap. Fortunately, I was still pretty dopey. I sucked some ice chips and talked with Becky a bit. I don't recall anything of what I said other than that I was trying to be reassuring (I think) and thank her for being there. That may be wishful thinking on my part. I might well have been raving about how it's all Canada's fault--fact is, my memory of that night is less than perfect.

I had three dressed incisions (which I have learned is pretty typical), one of which had a rubber drain tube attached to a squeeze bulb coming out of it. The drain and squeeze bulb are atypical, but required when the appendix is necrotic and/or abcessed. Here is a picture of the drain bulb. Note the vile bodily humors contained therein:

Eventually, Becky went home, probably later than she should have, and I settled down for a long night of oxygen, antibiotics, pain meds, ice chips, and, for the third night in a row, despite being doped to the eyeballs, not one wink of sleep. It was, obviously, a long night.

Since arriving at the ER, I had been on one or another sort of IV fluids. First simple saline, then, pre-and-post operative, lacated Ringer's (and if you've never done so, a quick look at Wikipoodia's article on Dr. Sydney Ringer is both interesting and instructive). At this point, I'd probably had about 5-6 liters of IV fluid pumped into me over the course of the day. By contrast, I had urinated once, that morning, in the ER (and, partially, in a cup), and not very much. Now, I know what you're thinking. Gary should just pee. There's a problem, however. Gary was stuck in the damned bed at this point. Gary's got oxygen hoses in his nostrils, and IVs in his arm and a freaking stress ball hanging out of his abdomen (seriously, I felt like a Brownie camera...if I squeezed it, would I click?). So the kind and very professional nurses gave me a bed urinal.

One of the early experiences which all (or so close to all as to make no difference) people in all cultures go through is toilet training. One of the things which is drummed into you during toilet training is that you should not pee in the bed. Using a bed urinal is, for all intents and purposes, peeing in bed. It is exquisitely embarrassing. I wasn't aware that it was possible to be embarrassed while alone. Well, now I know.

I will not regale you with further details of that first night. I ran a fever well over 103 degrees at one point, I took pain meds which made me sleepy but didn't sleep, I shamefacedly peed in a bottle, I grimaced, I had my temperature and BP checked, my infusion machine chattered away pumping antibiotics and Ringer's solution into me, time passed, the mind wandered.

The morning of 6/3 arrived. At this point I had not slept for 72 hours (unless you count time spent under anesthesia, which I don't and you shouldn't). I had not eaten anything for about 60 hours. I had consumed no liquids aside from the ginger ale I had the CT contrast in and the ice chips I was allowed post-op for a good 36 hours. I'm telling you all of this to try and excuse what I'm about to share with you and, hopefully, protect some of my hard-earned food snob street cred. Breakfast arrived. As I was on a clear liquid diet, breakfast consisted of lukewarm decaf coffee with no cream, lukewarm low-sodium chicken broth, lukewarm jello and, thankfully cold apple juice. Franklin once wrote that hunger is the best sauce. That broth was tepid, sorely lacking in salt, and the best thing I ever ate. The jello was a symphony in boiled horse bones and red dye no. 5. The decaf coffee was...well, I have to draw the line there. Hunger was unable to make the blood-temperature, decaf, coffee anything but awful...a big pile of sugar, however, did the trick and I drank it like ambrosia. My attitude toward the apple juice was, frankly, pornographic and shall not be discussed further here. I have never had a better worse meal.

Shortly thereafter, my nurse checked in on me. I was still running a fever. She updated a number of "goals" on a whiteboard where the nurses kept their names, call #'s, and other info I might need. Goal #6 was "toot." I have always liked setting achievable goals, so this looked to me like success in the offing. This, of all areas, is one in which I have always felt like I could outperform expectations. To top it off, I had been feeling bloated and gassy since this whole business started Monday night. I was ready to cross goal #6 off the list and forge ahead.

I could not fart.

Seriously. For the first time in my life including those portions of it which I cannot remember (I have this on good authority from my mom) I could not fart. I wanted to--heaven knows I needed to. All the gaseous stars were aligned. My lower intestine was like the methane Belmont Stakes at starting time and the gate would not open. I have rarely worked as hard at or been as uniformly frustrated by anything as I was that day. Lunch arrived (same as breakfast but with "beef" broth, grape juice, and "hot" tea). I am at least pleased to say that it was unappetizing. I wish I could say that I didn't eat it anyway, but I did (except for the tea which was more vile than the rest). It gurgled along down inside me and I STILL could not fart. This went on all day.

My fever returned and got quite high for a while. I had chills. I could not sleep. I could not fart. I wasn't in a lot of pain, but I didn't argue about the pain meds even though I'm not a fan of them. They didn't help me sleep. They just turned everything vague. The antibiotics were making me feel like crap and one of them was making my mouth taste like burnt aluminum foil. I was a depressed, angry, exhausted mess. I started feeling genuinely antisocial. I convinced myself that I was going to strongly protest the broth, although, in retrospect, it was the tea which constituted the greatest offense. The broth needed salt and heat. There was no way to redeem that tea short of finding the field in which it was grown and napalming it.

Then, when I was good and distracted by the prospect of really making a scene about the broth, some internal mechanism decided that my rectum no longer needed to be closed like a bear trap and a tiny, itty-bitty baby fart escaped. I was THRILLED! I completely forgot about making a scene about the broth and almost called the nurse to give her the WONDERFUL news. Fortunately, Becky showed up just then and, as she frequently does, catalyzed me back into sanity (it is a well-known fact that when she goes out of town, I tend to fall apart). She had gotten someone to cover one of her classes so she could take a long lunch break and combine it with her planning period to drive all the way back home and see me for an hour or so. The rest of you guys can be jealous. I've got me a good one.

About this time, they decided that my blood oxygenation was fine and I didn't have to wear the hose any more. This allowed me to move around by unplugging the IV unit from the wall (it had a battery backup) and rolling the IV tree along with me to....THE BATHROOM where I was able to pee like a civilized person again. This also allowed Becky and I to take a walk around the surgical unit, which was encouraged (goal #3 actually). I even got to empty the drain bulb (which led to a question of whether I was leaking brake fluid or coolant).

It's late and I have to work tomorrow, so I'll leave off for now. I promise, I'll get to the hallucinations, perspiration, and a brief discussion of the complexity of the subconscious in part 3.

The Devil's Dick or What I Did On My Summer Vacation (part 1)

2011-06-15T12:22:00.000-07:00

So, if you follow my Twitter or Facebook you know, by now, that two weeks ago, I was admitted to the hospital, underwent emergency surgery, and am back at work now. For the interested, here are the details (some gory, some just weird).

On Memorial Day (5/31) I started feeling poorly. I decided to ignore it as hay fever and just go to the gym as scheduled. Fortunately, as it turns out, the gym was closed for the holiday and I was unable to work out. I went home, prepared dinner, and, almost immediately following dinner, started to feel awful--bloated, constipated, nauseous. I went upstairs and lay down but continued to feel awful all night. I didn't sleep more than 5 min. at a stretch that night, and woke up feeling as poorly.

I didn't eat anything, on 6/1, just sipped some ginger ale. I was running a high fever (around 101/102) during the course of the day with chills. My stomach still felt horribly bloated and I was unable to find a position in which I could relieve the discomfort and pressure. Toward that afternoon I began to feel a dull ache, like constipation or indigestion in my abdomen, but it was not very localized. I measured my temperature at 102.6 that evening. I decided that if I was not feeling better in the morning I would go to the emergency room. Again, I was unable to sleep, despite being completely exhausted.

On 6/2, I had my wife take me to the emergency room before she went to work. The pain in my abdomen had become more notable, but was still poorly localized, only becoming sharp when the car went over a bump. Even then it was more general to my right side than to the location which I have always assigned (admittedly on scant evidence) to my appendix. I was, however, thinking appendicitis at this point, despite the fact that the pain was not acute, not localized where expected, etc. My fever at this point was around 101.

At the emergency room, they examined me, and found, not surprisingly, that physical examination was inconclusive. I was put on IV fluids to try and rehydrate me (keep in mind I had not eaten for about 40 hours at this point and had consumed relatively little liquid either). They ordered a course of abdominal films and an abdominal CT scan without contrast. Hours passed--that's not a criticism, btw. ER's are horribly busy places and modern diagnostics take time--especially given what I now know about my condition. The x-rays and CT scan were not conclusive. The x-rays were almost useless as I apparently have something known as a malrotated bowel (for some reason, every medical professional mentioning this to me asked me if anyone had ever mentioned this to me before--which, of course, they hadn't as I'm pretty sure there's no way of seeing this without an abdominal x-ray or CT scan). Opinions were divided as to appendicitis, perforation of the large intestine due to diverticulitis, or possibly kidney stones (I was having a fair amount of backache at the time). A second course of CT scans was ordered with contrast. Meanwhile, my fever had hit 102 again. I was on an ER gurney, wearing a gown and a pained expression, and having chills like I was in a Jack London story.

The problem, by the way, with chills due to fever, as opposed to chills due to actually being dangerously cold is that, eventually, chills due to really being cold give way to hypothermia. Hypothermia produces a nice, warm feeling of well-being while you freeze to death. Not so chills due to fever. They just go on, making you feel like you're going to die, and it is not possible to get warm enough to get rid of them. ER blankets, being, essentially heavy t-shirt material don't help. They, at best, offer moral support. At home I had been balled up under 3 quilts, wearing full pyjamas, a fleece robe, and a wool beanie cap (and still shivering).

The second CT scan was completed and after the results came in, it was determined that I definitely had appendicitis. The ER started me on IV antibiotics--and allow me to thank the ER nurse whose name was either Christy or Christie. The initial order was for an antibiotic which the computer allowed but which has a 10-15% chance of cross-allergic reaction with penicillin (to which I am quite thoroughly allergic). The nurse noted this, stopped in the midst of preparing the bag, looked at me, and without consulting either my chart or a reference to the medicine in question, said, "You have a penicillin allergy. I'm going to go check on this because I don't think this medication is the best choice--it can trigger allergies in people sensitive to penicillin." I am not (obviously--this is a blog) a Luddite. In particular, I am not a Luddite where health care is concerned. Prior to modern imaging techniques it would have been much more difficult to diagnose my illness. I am extremely suspicious, however, of those who believe that we can reduce health care costs through automation. Until you have a system as intelligent as Christy the ER nurse, a system capable of caring about my well-being as much as she clearly did, of having the pride and confidence of a professional, you'd damned well better have Christy in the ER hanging the bag and making sure the "expert system" doesn't kill me.

Something else that struck me, as I am really unused to hospital care, was the amount of time people spent checking on whether or not I was in pain. For the most part, I wasn't. I wasn't comfortable, thanks to the fever, chills, abdominal discomfort, and approximately 55 hours without sleep, but honestly, my abdomen didn't hurt unless I moved. Of course, I had to move now and then. Finally, I broke down and asked for something for pain--because on top of everything else I had a splitting headache. I got two things. One, an IV NSAID called Tordol which is a freaking miracle drug which got my fever back down to a mere 100 degrees, and Dilaudid (dihydromorphone) which may be the most effective pain medication I've ever encountered. It doesn't really make you stop hurting, rather it makes the fact that you hurt completely unimportant.

Finally, about 11.5 hours after checking myself into the ER, I started prep for surgery. My surgeon, Dr. Karim Trad, should give lessons on how to talk to patients. He was clear, frank, and as detailed as I wanted him to be. He explained that it appeared that my appendix was the primary thing at fault, but that there were potential abnormalities (and btw, was I aware that I had a malrotated bowel, very unusual?). He would attempt to do the surgery via a laproscope, but wanted me to be aware that if the landscape of my innards made that impossible, there was a chance he would have to resort to open surgery. He explained very clearly what the ramifications of that would be in terms of recovery, post-operative pain, etc. I told him that I was comfortable with him making that decision as he came highly recommended by Christy who had potentially saved my bacon earlier. If you need internal work, see Dr. Trad at Reston Hospital Center. The man is a rock star.

I was in surgery for 2.5 hours, give or take. 40 min. is typical for an appendectomy. The reason for this is that my appendix was not swollen in any traditional sense. Instead, it had, at some point in the last 6-12 months, died. I currently suspect that this may have started last summer as I currently count some six distinct bouts of fever, chills, gastro-intestinal distress, etc. since late June of 2010. My intestines had created a kind of sack of epithelial tissue around the appendix, and, within that foul womb, the Devil's Dick was born.

That, friends, is my appendix. Now, normally it's about the size of your pinkie finger and is a pale, uniform pink, like cotton candy, or a baby's butt. Here's an example from teh webs:

Mine was about an inch thick, about 5" long, and quite deceased. It looks, I think you'll agree, like some unholy generative organ, hence the name. Becky is of the opinion that this is not my appendix at all, but rather the alien which ate my appendix. The technical term for its state is "dead," also "liquefying necrosis" and "wet gangrene." Further kudos to Dr. Trad for agreeing that the pictures are totally awesome, and giving me copies. He managed to remove it without broaching the sack'o'disease that my body had created and get it out intact in an endobag.

Next time: Hallucinations, broth, and bilious humors.

Recipe: Hamburger Steak w/Greek Tomato Ragout

2011-05-04T05:56:00.000-07:00

This is my version of one of my favorite dishes at The Olde Town, a great Greek restaurant on King St. in Charleston, SC.

Ingredients:

Steaks:
1 lb. 85% lean ground beef
1/2 tsp. ground cumin
1/2 tsp. dry oregano
1/2 tsp. kosher salt
1/4 tsp. chili powder
1/4 tsp. black pepper

Sauce:
2 c. mixed veg (onions, zucchini, carrot, bell pepper)
14.5 oz. can of diced tomatoes (or half a 28oz can of whole tomatoes, diced) w/liquid
lg. sprig of fresh oregano
1/4 c. medium-dry red wine (merlot or zinfandel is good)

Pita bread
Tzatziki

Preparation:

Mix the ground beef thoroughly with the herbs and spices. Roll into a loaf and divide into thirds. Make 3 3/4" thick hamburger steaks. Set aside to rest for about 30 min at room temperature.

Heat a heavy-bottomed skillet over med-high heat. Add ~1Tbs. of olive oil and coat the pan. Add the steaks. Allow them to sear on one side for 3 min. Turn. Cook on second side for 2-3 min. until approximately medium (depending on your taste--I don't tend to cook ground meat any rarer than that). Do not press or mess around with the steaks at any time. Turn once more and cook for 15s on original side (to get the juices from the top of the steaks back into the pan where they belong). Remove steaks to a plate to rest and tent with aluminum foil.

Add the vegetables to the pan along with about 1/4 tsp of kosher salt and a few grinds of black papper and sautee until browned. Deglaze with red wine and reduce by half. Add tomatoes. Cook for ~8 min. until most liquid is evaporated.

Un-tent and plate the steaks. Pour the juices from the resting plate into the pan and incorporate with the vegetables. Serve the vegetable ragout over the steaks and accompany with toasted pita bread and tzatziki.

Compare/Contrast...

2011-05-03T06:39:00.000-07:00

If you're still ranting about Obama (and I can understand being unhappy with, but not ranting about his policies) I offer the following point of clarification:

Shot in head during Bush administration: Dick Cheney's hunting buddy, civil liberties

Shot in head during Obama administration: Osama bin Laden, civil liberties

Still plenty to be unhappy about there, but definitely a change.

Recipe: Cabbage and Polish Sausage Soup

2011-03-27T16:46:00.000-07:00

Here's a soup I threw together off-the-cuff this evening with stuff I had around the kitchen. Turned out very well. I think in the future I'd add some fresh rosemary.

Ingredients:

14 oz Polska Kielbasa (I use the lo-cal turkey kind) sliced into 1/4" rounds
2 oz (about 4 slices) smoked bacon, cut into lardon
1 lg onion, diced
3 ribs of celery diced
2-3 med. carrots, sliced into 1/4" rounds
2-3 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 a med. savoy cabbage cored and chopped into a 1" dice
4 med. waxy potatoes, cut in 1/2" dice (red or yukon gold)
2 qt. chicken stock
1 qt. water
1 c. dry white wine
1 1/2 tsp. dry thyme
1 Tbs. dry parsley
1 1/2 tsp. smoked paprika
2 bay leaves
salt and pepper

Preparation:

In a heavy-bottomed soup or stock pot, saute the bacon until the fat has almost completely rendered out of it. Remove the bacon and set aside. Remove all but about 1/2 Tbs. of the rendered fat and set aside. Brown the sausage in the bacon fat and set aside. Add 1/2 Tbs of bacon drippings to the pot and saute the onion, celery, carrot, and garlic along with about 1 tsp of kosher salt and pepper to taste until the onion becomes translucent. Deglaze the pot bottom with the white wine, and allow the liquid to reduce by half. Add the thyme, parsley, paprika, and bay leaves and return the browned sausage and bacon to the pot. Add the chicken stock. Stir in the cabbage and potatoes and add the water. Raise the temperature to high and bring the soup to a strong boil, stirring occasionally. You may see some scum form on the top of the water. Feel free to either skim it or ignore it. I have tried both and can't tell that it makes any difference at all.

Once the soup is at a boil, cover and reduce the temperature to keep the soup at a good simmer. Simmer for about 90 minutes, stirring about every 30 min. Taste and correct the seasoning. Serve piping hot. Makes a metric arseload of soup, so if you are unsure about it, I suggest cutting down the recipe.

Current reading...

2011-03-24T06:18:00.000-07:00

Been a while since I've blogged here, so I thought I'd offer some insight into what I've been doing instead:

Cincinnatus: George Washington and the Enlightenment by Garry Wills

Swords Against Death by Fritz Leiber

why's (poignant) guide to ruby by why the lucky stiff

The Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss

This is a pretty good snapshot of what my reading habits look like these days. 1 part academic non-fiction with a strong leaning toward history and biography, 1 part pulp (frequently re-reading an old friend as in the above case), 1 part technical writing, and 1 part big, heavy, well-written what-have-you.

A moment with my good friend, Facebook...

2011-02-17T10:53:00.000-08:00

Lately, the internet has seen a rash of violent robberies by Facebook users visiting London:

12:12:35 PM my_scammed_friend: hello
12:12:40 PM my_scammed_friend: how are you doing??

12:13:05 PM Gary Walker: Very well, thank you.

12:13:13 PM my_scammed_friend: i am not good at the moment

12:13:25 PM Gary Walker: Oh? What happened?

12:13:40 PM my_scammed_friend: my family and i went to London UK for vacation but unfortunately we got mugged at gun and knife point last night

Now at this point, I know what's up.
12:13:46 PM Gary Walker: OH MY GOD!
12:13:49 PM Gary Walker: Are you all right?
12:14:15 PM Gary Walker: Also, you took all 17 kids to London?
12:14:19 PM Gary Walker: Wow!

12:14:19 PM my_scammed_friend: all our cash and credit card was stolen including cell phone

12:14:29 PM Gary Walker: Jesus! Is there anything I can do to help?

12:14:49 PM my_scammed_friend: It was a brutal and scary experience i was hurt on my right hand but thank God we still got our life and passport saved here with us

12:15:14 PM Gary Walker: Wow. That's really frightening.
12:15:21 PM Gary Walker: You can't trust those goddamned brits. Nothing like some weird racism.

12:15:37 PM my_scammed_friend: the most brutal part of it is that We have been to the embassy and the police but they said we should wait for another 3weeks for them to investigate the matter

12:15:38 PM Gary Walker: Violent Anglican assholes. All of them.
12:15:46 PM Gary Walker: What?
12:15:49 PM Gary Walker: That's ridiculous.
12:16:02 PM Gary Walker: My uncle is the attache there. Let me give him a call for you.

12:16:12 PM my_scammed_friend: Our return Flight leaves in few hours from now but we are having some problems settling our hotel bills here....please i need your help now

12:16:26 PM Gary Walker: I'll call and the embassy will get you squared away.
12:16:33 PM Gary Walker: What's your phone number where you're staying?
12:16:48 PM Gary Walker: I'll have a Marine down there lickety-split to help you out.
12:16:52 PM Gary Walker: Just let me call uncle Jack.
12:17:13 PM Gary Walker: Do you want them to bring London Metro PD as well?
12:17:37 PM Gary Walker: They'll probably want a deposition before you leave.
Surely this will dissuade them? But no...
12:18:43 PM my_scammed_friend: I didn't have any access to phone now the muggers made away with it i have been having problems making and receiving calls since i am here and i am also embarrassed please i need the loan now i promise to refund you as soon as i am back home assuming i have access to phone now i would have called you i am very sorry i cant call you now.

12:19:09 PM Gary Walker: No problem. I'll call the hotel and take care of it. What's the name of the hotel?

12:20:42 PM my_scammed_friend: the worst is the hotel is having problem with there credit card machine,i will be very much safe if you can have the money wired to my name via westernunion
12:20:59 PM my_scammed_friend: do you know any westernunion store close to you?

12:21:04 PM Gary Walker: It's not a problem. I just talked to Uncle Jack.
12:21:29 PM Gary Walker: Tell me which hotel and he's going to get a consulate team out there and they'll get you taken care of. Take them about 10 min.
12:22:20 PM Gary Walker: Actually, uncle jack says he can get you the money wired.
I'm getting bored by now, so give them the really obvious clue...
12:22:30 PM Gary Walker: Just call the embassy and ask for him. Jack Bauer.
12:22:38 PM Gary Walker: Can you do that?
12:22:51 PM Gary Walker: I don't have a western union store near me, but they have a WU terminal in the embassy they can send from.
12:23:07 PM Gary Walker: Just ask for Jack Bauer and tell him you're a friend of mine.

12:23:28 PM my_scammed_friend: you can have the money wired to me via western union online with your CC
12:23:40 PM my_scammed_friend: just log on to www.westernunion.com

12:23:43 PM Gary Walker: Not from work. They block most websites.
12:23:46 PM Gary Walker: Sorry.
12:23:58 PM Gary Walker: Just call my uncle jack. He's waiting to hear from you.

12:24:02 PM my_scammed_friend: no...its a trusted website

12:24:19 PM Gary Walker: Dude, are you not listening? They don't allow most websites from my work.
12:24:23 PM Gary Walker: it's a secure facility.
12:24:38 PM Gary Walker: Just call my uncle at the embassy, he'll have the money couriered to you.

12:25:39 PM my_scammed_friend: the hotel manager will not allow me leave until i pay up my bills here

12:26:06 PM Gary Walker: Then tell him to call the embassy. It's a local call.

12:26:56 PM my_scammed_friend: I didn't have any access to phone now the muggers made away with it i have been having problems making and receiving calls since i am here

12:27:10 PM Gary Walker: Get the hotel manager to call.
12:27:16 PM Gary Walker: The hotel has a phone.

12:27:28 PM my_scammed_friend: you can only call him now
12:27:38 PM my_scammed_friend: should i give you his number now?

12:27:41 PM Gary Walker: Sure.

12:28:01 PM my_scammed_friend: ok
12:31:43 PM my_scammed_friend: +447024086282 OR +447011138267
12:31:55 PM my_scammed_friend: that the hotel managers number
12:32:32 PM my_scammed_friend: got it?
12:35:09 PM my_scammed_friend: are you there??

12:35:29 PM Gary Walker: Yes. Sorry. We had to process a new inmate.
12:35:57 PM Gary Walker: I'm not sure I can call internationally. We're not on the main Cuban phone system here at Guantanamo.
12:36:25 PM Gary Walker: I'll send him an SMS

12:36:29 PM my_scammed_friend: ok
12:36:34 PM my_scammed_friend: send him now
12:37:03 PM my_scammed_friend: please try and call him that will be more better
12:37:05 PM my_scammed_friend: ?

12:37:11 PM Gary Walker: I'll see what I can do.

12:37:14 PM my_scammed_friend: ok?
12:37:17 PM my_scammed_friend: ok

12:37:27 PM Gary Walker: Is there any way he could call me?

12:37:41 PM my_scammed_friend: no...

12:40:12 PM Gary Walker: My call-out isn't working.
12:40:16 PM Gary Walker: Can you give him this message:
12:40:18 PM Gary Walker: Please call my uncle, jack bauer. He can send money to you for Charles: [44] (0)20 7499-9000

12:41:51 PM my_scammed_friend: any luck?

12:42:02 PM Gary Walker: No. I can't call out from the prison here.
12:42:13 PM Gary Walker: Did you give the hotel manager that message?
12:42:21 PM Gary Walker: That is the best I can do for you.
12:42:29 PM Gary Walker: My uncle will definitely take care of you if you call him.
12:42:36 PM Gary Walker: He'll wire or courier the money immediately.
12:42:56 PM Gary Walker: He knows how close my wife and I are to you and Fred.
12:43:11 PM Gary Walker: How proud we are of your decision to live as an openly gay couple and adopt all those kids.

12:43:15 PM my_scammed_friend: tell him to wire the money yourself now

12:43:42 PM Gary Walker: Don't get pushy, man, I'm trying to help you.
12:44:18 PM Gary Walker: This is just like that time in college when you insisted that I go buy heroin for you.
12:45:29 PM Gary Walker: Okay. Uncle Jack needs an address to wire the money to.

12:45:43 PM my_scammed_friend: ok
Still not getting it? Crime...it's not for the clever.
12:45:47 PM Gary Walker: They've had to quit using Western Union because of people getting scammed on facebook.
12:45:57 PM Gary Walker: They use a courier service now.

12:46:23 PM my_scammed_friend: they should use money gram instead

12:46:52 PM Gary Walker: Dude, you want to tell the embassy that, you give them a call and tell them. [44] (0)20 7499-9000 is the phone number.

12:47:24 PM my_scammed_friend: should i give you the info now?
Hey! Maybe these losers have a PayPal account I can get locked. :)
12:47:47 PM Gary Walker: Yes. What's the address to have the money delivered to?
12:48:03 PM Gary Walker: Oh wait!
12:48:09 PM Gary Walker: I could paypal you the money. Would that work?

12:48:48 PM my_scammed_friend: you can only have the money wire with your CC or go to any outlet

12:48:51 PM Gary Walker: Do you have a paypal account I could send it to?
12:49:01 PM Gary Walker: There aren't any western union outlets in Cuba, man.
12:49:15 PM Gary Walker: I'm stationed at freaking Guantanamo Bay.
12:49:35 PM Gary Walker: Okay. Better give me the address, then. I'll get uncle jack to courier it over.

12:49:41 PM my_scammed_friend: there is everywhere

12:49:58 PM Gary Walker: Man, are you high again?
12:50:09 PM Gary Walker: I thought you were going to quit using?
12:50:19 PM Gary Walker: I'm telling you there's no western union at Gitmo.

12:50:21 PM my_scammed_friend: you can google for the nearest one at www.westernunion.com/locator
12:52:08 PM my_scammed_friend: are you there now??

12:52:25 PM Gary Walker: No, I've told you, that site is blocked.

12:52:39 PM my_scammed_friend: try it

12:52:59 PM Gary Walker: i did
12:53:28 PM Gary Walker: Look, if you will give me the address I can get the money to you.
12:53:34 PM Gary Walker: But I can't send western union.
12:54:10 PM Gary Walker: If I send the courier to a public place, can you meet them to get the cash?

12:55:11 PM my_scammed_friend: you can also have the money wired via western union as well

12:56:11 PM Gary Walker: Charles, I know you're not that bright, but you aren't listening to me.
12:57:06 PM Gary Walker: I'm telling you there's no Western Union available here at the FBI office on Gitmo.
12:57:09 PM Gary Walker: That's the truth.

12:57:25 PM my_scammed_friend: ok

12:57:45 PM Gary Walker: So I can have my uncle send you the money from the embassy, but that's the only option I have.
12:58:00 PM Gary Walker: take it or leave it.

12:58:05 PM my_scammed_friend: ok
12:58:16 PM my_scammed_friend: should i give you the info now?

12:58:26 PM Gary Walker: Yes. Give me an address to have the money delivered.

12:59:00 PM my_scammed_friend: i am in a local library now nearer to a western union and money gram outlet
12:59:19 PM my_scammed_friend: he can have the money wired to me with either two of them

1:00:30 PM Gary Walker: Man, I've about had enough of telling you they can't wire it.
1:00:59 PM Gary Walker: I'm sorry for your trouble, but you need to get in touch with reality.

1:01:01 PM my_scammed_friend: why?

1:01:20 PM Gary Walker: Because they don't allow embassy employees to use money wires services any more.
1:01:29 PM Gary Walker: Because of the scams that have been going around.
1:01:42 PM Gary Walker: My uncle is the FBI attache at the embassy.
1:01:45 PM Gary Walker: Jack Bauer.

1:02:07 PM my_scammed_friend: tell him he can go to the western union outlet there and have the money wired since this is not a scam

1:02:27 PM Gary Walker: I can tell him that but it's still illegal for him to do so.
1:02:35 PM Gary Walker: He's pretty straight-arrow.

1:02:46 PM my_scammed_friend: tell him

1:03:54 PM Gary Walker: Man, for somebody asking for help you're being pretty demanding.
1:04:02 PM Gary Walker: Let me talk to Frank instead.

1:04:31 PM my_scammed_friend: ok

1:05:20 PM Gary Walker: Frank?

1:05:57 PM my_scammed_friend: i am freaked out here

1:06:18 PM Gary Walker: No doubt!
1:06:24 PM Gary Walker: What the hell is wrong with Charles?
1:06:29 PM Gary Walker: He won't listen to me.
1:06:42 PM Gary Walker: He hasn't been shooting up again, has he?

1:07:19 PM my_scammed_friend: please how are you going to help me out now?

1:07:40 PM Gary Walker: I'm trying to, man.
1:08:05 PM Gary Walker: I've got my uncle ready to send you money by courier, but Charles is going nuts about how it has to be western union or moneygram.
1:08:14 PM Gary Walker: Can you give me the address you're at?
1:08:20 PM Gary Walker: I can have you the cash there in 10 minutes.

1:08:20 PM my_scammed_friend: ok
1:08:36 PM my_scammed_friend: 7 Albemarle Street, London W1S 4HQ,United Kingdom
1:09:25 PM my_scammed_friend: got it?

1:09:43 PM Gary Walker: Yeah. Isnt that over by that Korean restaurant?
1:09:57 PM Gary Walker: Kava or something like that?
1:10:12 PM Gary Walker: I used to go get bulgogi there when I lived in Westminster.

1:10:46 PM my_scammed_friend: how are you helping now?

1:11:01 PM Gary Walker: My uncle is couriering the money.
1:11:15 PM Gary Walker: Just wait outside. Shouldn't take more than 10-15 min.

1:11:21 PM my_scammed_friend: ok

1:11:25 PM Gary Walker: The courier car will pull up with his police escort.
1:11:36 PM Gary Walker: They'll ask you for the passcode.
1:11:47 PM Gary Walker: The passcode is "malfeasance"
1:11:49 PM Gary Walker: got it?
1:12:53 PM Gary Walker: Just wait outside.

1:16:01 PM Gary Walker: You there, Frank?

1:22:20 PM Gary Walker: Frank, you there?
1:22:22 PM Gary Walker: You get the money?

The Writing Desk...

2011-02-15T07:21:00.000-08:00

Lately I've been spending a fair amount of time on the chrome-netbook-pilot group. This morning I read a thread that asked whether I would like a Chrome OS desktop to replace my current desktop operating system(s). Here are my thoughts on that subject.

For starters, let's talk about where our usage metaphors for computers originate. Imagine, if you will, a typical office or home working environment of the 1950's. Heck, don't imagine. Pop in "The Maltese Falcon" and take a good, hard look at Sam Spade's office. He has a few things that should stand out to someone interested in user interfaces:

A large, mostly empty desktop where he can set out his current work items
Filing cabinets filled with folders which contain documents
An inbox and outbox for mail
A trash can
A secretary to manage and facilitate his workflow.

This, in a nutshell, is the desktop environment that every desktop OS, regardless of its bells and whistles creates an abstraction of for you to work in.

This is not what ChromeOS does.

Let me give you another image of another type of work environment. It's 1850. You're riding on a train, taking a business trip, say, and you want to get some work done. As the sort of person who thinks ahead, you've brought along the tools you need to work while mobile in your writing box, a handy lapdesk that lets you do your essential functions even while chugging along the rails. You open the box and set up to work. You have:

Writing utensils
Blank paper
Mail supplies
Your address book
An accordion folder with the documents you're working on organized in it
A notebook

So, what have we done away with? Well, for starters, the desktop. There isn't a workspace to pull up multiple things at once and spread them out. Can you imagine how that would piss off the rest of the people in your train compartment? You can see one thing at a time and can move back and forth between different pages or documents. You're also not going to be toting around your filing cabinets full of documents. They're going to stay back at your office. You will travel light. You can still take care of correspondence. You can do work, write new documents, peruse what you brought with you, etc.

Different experience, isn't it? Now imagine that you are buddies with Superman. He's there on the train with you. Every time you write a letter, Superman snatches it up and flies, faster than the proverbial speeding bullet and delivers it for you. His super-hearing lets him know when someone has a reply for you ready and he zips off, grabs it, and brings it to you. When you need a document you left at the office, he flies back there, grabs it, and brings it to you. When you're done with one, he flies back to the office, files it for you...etc, etc, etc. You get it.

This is what Chrome OS is. A writing desk + Superman. Is it the same as a desktop? No. Do you do all the same things with it? No...but that's okay because you didn't have to take Sam Spade's office with you.

Blue-eyed Soul

2011-02-14T16:24:00.000-08:00

I recently had something like the following exchange on Twitter:

C: Listening to radio station X just made me feel both tired and angry.

Me: Must have been some playlist.

C: Bad acoustic cover of a rock song I love.

Me: Like hearing the opening bars of "Soul Man" and getting Michael MacDonald instead of Sam & Dave?

C: Exactly like that.

I'd like to send the following message out to the Michael MacDonalds and Rod Stewarts of the world. To anyone who is finding their second wind by recording multiple albums of standards or "oldies."

Stop.
Please stop.
I realize these songs are important to you. That's why you should stop. You're killing them.
You want to do something meaningful? Don't re-record them. Get the original artists back in print here in the US. Don't record "River Deep, Mountain High." Do something about the fact that you can't buy Ike and Tina's version of it without importing it. What you're doing is not a respectful tribute. It's Pat Boone recording "Tutti-Frutti." So stop. Please. Just stop.

Why Chrome OS Works

2011-02-10T12:39:00.000-08:00

Once again, I don't expect this blog is telling any of the nice people at Google who gave me the free laptop don't know, but I'm not trying to. These are just the things that occur to me while using the OS.

Chrome OS works because you already know how to use it.

Let's examine that. One of the biggest difficulties that mobile devices have had historically in gaining traction has been that they had to abstract the user experience in new ways in order to fit the new platform. Even a very usable mobile platform like iOS does this--iOS goes further, defining a new set of interface tropes that its competitors now follow.

Chrome OS takes a different tack. A netbook isn't intended to present a new operating paradigm, but rather to present a subset of the things you could/would do with an ordinary laptop. The biggest (and arguably most important) of those subsets is internet browsing (which, obviously, covers a lot of ground these days). Chrome OS takes that specific functionality and attempts to build an entire unified experience around it. Wanna listen to music? Do it in a browser window. Watch a movie? Browser. Write a letter? Browser. Play games? Browser.

There has been a significant amount of scoffing about this whole "browser as an OS" model, but I have to say it works. I could hand my Cr48 to my father-in-law and he'd know how to use it. He'd be able to do almost anything you _can_ do with it without any special instruction. Compare to this the experience of converting him over to Ubuntu Netbook Edition (which I actually did fairly recently). The unfamiliar (although simple and intuitive) interface was a barrier, albeit a small one. Chrome OS is not as flexible as Ubuntu, certainly, and won't be even when it is complete, but that is by design. You already know how to use it, how to make things work, and how to get to what you need because you do all of those things already. Google has not softened the learning curve for a new device. They have eliminated it. It would be a mistake to underestimate the value of that.

Chrome OS Update: The Cr48 and How to Work It

2011-02-07T12:01:00.000-08:00

For this update, a brief examination of the state of Chrome OS as a business platform:

First of all, I am probably not typical of the present business user. I work for a largish cloud computing company and we use a lot of cloud-oriented applications in our business operations already, including Google Apps and Google Sites. If you're not doing much of your work in cloud land, your mileage may vary.

Things that are there:

1. Stability - Chrome has always had this and Chrome OS is really no exception. A single page or tab failing generally has no impact on the OS as a whole.

2. Performance - The Cr48 is no great shakes in terms of hardware, single-core Atom, 2GB of RAM, but the SSD makes a dramatic difference in the overall speediness of response. There are still a few areas where performance is sluggish, notably Flash and occasional responsiveness issues with the touchpad (there are things to be fine-tuned). None of this has a particular impact on business-type applications, though. A Chrome OS notebook aimed at the business user might be a bit huskier (say a dual-core Atom and maybe a graphics chipset with better 2D performance) but there's nothing wrong with the core platform hardware.

3. Portability - The current platform is light, mobile and gets superb battery life.

And some things which are not:

1. VPN support - there is, at present, no way to connect to a VPN. If there's going to be business adoption of this platform that's going to be a requirement. Yes, there is SSL and if you're "in the cloud" that is the key to security, but the reality is that even cloud businesses often do things like restricting the IP ranges from which their applications can be accessed. That means either supporting VPN or producing something which businesses are comfortable having replace VPN. Personally, my money would be on supporting it.

2. Bluetooth - there is presently no support for Bluetooth. There is only 1 usb port on this machine. Presumably, the way to use a lot of peripherals with it is for them to work wirelessly. Bluetooth may not be Google's preferred methodology for this (it certainly isn't for purposes of printing) but the PAN cloud of gadgets which surround the average road warrior will need to be talked with to make the best possible use of the Chrome netbook. That's going to mean bluetooth at least for the nonce. It will be interested to see how Google integrates Chrome OS with Android devices without bluetooth for direct access.

3. Offline functionality - There presently isn't any, so far as I can tell. As a result, this device would not be my choice for, say, working while on an airplane. I am aware that offline functionality is coming, but the challenge is that significant pieces of it are going to have to work for everyone, not just Google's Apps suite. Again, things are changing and I can foresee a day when in-flight wifi is the norm rather than the exception, but I don't see that day arriving prior to Q3-2011.

All told, if you are already working heavily using cloud tools, salesforce.com, Gmail, Google Apps, etc. the Cr48 may represent the direction things are heading for your mobile life.

Chrome OS Update: Panels Are Great

2011-02-04T20:02:00.000-08:00

Among the several keen things that are to be found in Chrome OS the one that has most recently stood out to me is panels. There are a few things in the OS which are automatically panelized, most notably Google Talk and the content browser. The very keen Panelize extension (click) allows you to embed most web pages into panels. The result is web apps in handy popups. Of course, not every app is conducive to this treatment, but for those that are (or have mobile versions which are) I am beginning to think that this is the proper way to access them--and it's a perfect UI widget for the Cr48.

4 Categories of Web 2.0 Branding

2011-02-03T18:36:00.000-08:00

I cannot find a business which does not fall into one of the following:

1. The Metaphor
This is where you come up with a whole hierarchy of nouns and verbs based around your own, personal clever metaphor for what people are doing on your site. The king of these businesses is, of course, Twitter, and their tweets, tweeting, etc. etc. If your business calls putting words on web pages something other than posting, you belong to this group.

2. The Linguist
This is where you take a cool sounding word from a relatively web-obscure language (ie, something other than English), preferably with some cool, dippy hippie meaning and name your business or product that. Ubuntu, Heroku, etc. etc.

3. The Portmanteau
This is possibly the oldest of the branding strategies. You take one word which is, ostensibly connected with what you do, and then combine it with something that either sounds cool or has a technical connotation, or, ideally, both. SlideRocket, Digifriends, Facebook, comemories, TweetDeck, etc.

4. The Vowel Shift
This category contains those brands which have established themselves by taking words, often having nothing to do with their products or businesses, and altering their spelling to be different, interesting, or simply faster to type. Flickr, Picasa, Kodingen (a double-whammy as it is also a type-3), Seesmic (and I have to shout out to Seesmic here because I totally love their product), Good Noows (another nice product which I use in spite of rather than because of its name). If it's missing a vowel or has too many vowels or the wrong vowels, this is where it belongs.

Why Chrome OS will be on your next netbook (and mine)...

2011-02-02T06:18:00.000-08:00

Today is my third day with the Cr-48, and I've had a little time to get used to its quirks. Here are some additional thoughts for those interested.

My favorite mobile device, hands down, is my iPod touch. It doesn't have cellular data, it doesn't have a phone, it doesn't have GPS, etc. My Blackberry has those things but, as a rule, I will avoid trying to do things on the Blackberry if possible, reasoning that I can always pull into the parking lot of a McDonalds or some other place offering the ubiquitous free wifi service and use the iPod instead. There are a lot of reasons for this having to do with the shortcomings of the 'berry, but at the moment I'm interested in the ones that have to do with the nice things about the iPod. Using the iPod is an excellent experience. You press a button and it's on, ready to work. You do what you want, press the button again and it goes back to saving power. Instantly. The interface is fast, intuitive, and easy to use. The only exceptions are where application vendors stray from Apple's excellent interface guidelines through either laziness, stubbornness, apathy, or incompetence. The Blackberry experience, even though it is a much more comprehensive suite of mobile hardware, cannot compete. The iPod makes me want an iPhone (next month! Verizon, I'm looking at you). The Blackberry does not make me want to see the Blackberry OS on another device, regardless of capability.

This is why you'll use ChromeOS when it drops. It is on, instantly. So far everyone who has seen the Cr wake from sleep has done a double take. This is not the kind of behavior we associate with any kind of laptop, even a netbook. Like the iPod, it is ready to do whatever you want to do just as fast as DHCP or 3G can provide it with an IP. When you're done, you close the lid and ignore it. At the end of the day, you plug it in. This is a notebook for people who want a computer, who want to do the things a computer allows them to do, but don't want to deal with the OS. IOS (and, probably Android, although I don't have an Android device) is the same thing for mobile. I don't want to fight with the Blackberry's idiosyncracies. I want to get stuff done while mobile.

Enough praise, on to griping:

The lack of a proper file browser is a tremendous pain, but one I am confident will be resolved. Of greater concern to me is the lack of any kind of unity in how various Chrome Web Store apps present various core user interface elements. I realize that we're dealing with webapps and that means that there is, essentially, no control over what they do and don't use. I'd like to see some kind of standardization on a nice, unified toolkit, however. Maybe certify those apps as being Chrome spiffy or whatnot.

As an example (and going back to the file browser), I popped the SD card from my camera into the SD slot yesterday evening. Picasa browses for files to upload using the ChromeOS content browser which sees (but won't open) the card. Dropbox, on the other hand, pops up an explorer-type file browser which exposes the entire filesystem (incidentally, if you want to look at the logs and what have you, you can upload them to dropbox, change them to .txt, and read them). This sort of interface inconsistency doesn't trouble me. I've used an enormous number of interfaces over the years, and they pretty much make sense to me. This will, however, cause the average user to blow a gasket. Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, but little minds are what we're dealing with. Most people, ie. people not in the computing business, have devoted relatively little of their attention or brainpower to using their computer. Moreover, graphical UI's are dependent on pattern recognition. Inconsistency in the UI presentation breaks that recognition and makes it dramatically harder for an average user to get things done. I'm sure this isn't telling the folks at Google anything they don't know, but it's something well worth discussing, and hopefully seeing improve in future releases.

As promised, Cabbage Rolls in Tomato Sauce

2011-02-01T19:54:00.000-08:00

Ingredients:

2 slices thick-cut bacon, diced
1/2 lb ground turkey (or beef, or veal, or whatever...something lean)
1 medium lg. onion, diced small
6 lg. savoy cabbage leaves
1/2 c. brown rice
1 lg. egg, beaten
1 can (14 oz) crushed tomatoes
1 Tbs Worcestershire sauce (I like Lea & Perrin's)
1 Tbs brown sugar
2 cloves garlic, chopped rough
Olive or vegetable oil
Water
Salt and Pepper

Cook rice and set aside.

Boil cabbage leaves for 2 min, quench in cold water. Cut out large, inflexible portion of stem. Set leaves aside.

In a heavy-bottomed saucepan with a lid, brown half the onion and the garlic in a few Tbs of oil. When the onion is well-caramelized, add in the ground turkey and brown thoroughly. Season w/salt and pepper. Set aside. Cook bacon until fat is rendered. Drain and set aside, leaving bacon drippings in pan.

Add remaining onion to the pan and cook onions until slightly browned. Add crushed tomatoes, Worcestershire sauce, and brown sugar to pan. Cook down at a hard simmer for 5 min, then season to taste w/salt and pepper, reduce heat to low and cover.

In a bowl, mix the cooked rice, meat, onions, and bacon together. Stir in the egg. Season w/salt and pepper to taste. Place about 2-3 tablespoons (give or take) into the center of a cabbage leaf and roll it up, tucking in the ends. Stick a toothpick through the cabbage roll at an angle to hold it together. Repeat until you have a half-dozen nice fat cabbage rolls. Put the rolls seam side down in the tomato sauce, and baste them with the sauce. Cook the cabbage rolls in the tomato sauce, covered, at a low, bare simmer for 45 min. Serve with pickled vegetables, brown bread and, ideally, that enzyme stuff that prevents gas because, you know, cabbage.

Serves 2-3 people as a main course.

My first evening with the CR-48

2011-01-31T20:01:00.000-08:00

So...this afternoon my lovely wife informed me that UPS had delivered a box addressed to me. I wondered what on earth it could be. When I arrived home I was shocked beyond measure to find that someone at Google had taken some kind of powerful hallucinogen and, as a result, selected me for the beta program for their Chrome OS notebook. I've spent the evening unboxing and fiddling with the CR-48, and these are my initial thoughts on it.

1. It is what it is. -- A lot of reviews I've read have had a bug up their asses because the CR-48 is not a high-power, super-fast laptop/chick magnet/food processor, etc. Personally I think this is because the average tech writer is actually confused by the fact that it looks a bit like a black MacBook, but is not, in fact, a black MacBook. "It TOTALLY looks like one! Why does it not do the Apples things?" It's a single-core Atom, 2GB of ram and a 16GB SSD running a 12.1" screen. It's well designed, light, extremely appealing visually (it's rubberized, matte black, body is positively Sith). It gets excellent battery life, has a bright, very legible screen, and does its job of running the Chrome web browser pretty darned well. It comes with 2 years of 100MB/month prepaid 3G data service from Verizon (additional service is reasonably priced).

2. It isn't what it isn't. -- The CR-48 is not a desktop replacement. There are a lot of things missing here--starting with a proper editor (SourceKit is a good start but it isn't there yet, if anyone has experience of Bespin, I'd love to hear it). There's no media player (yet). There's no proper file manager (yet). There's no wired network interface. There's only one USB port, etc. etc. It isn't what it isn't. "Desktop replacement" is not the intended role of this device or this OS.

3. There are areas where it just shines. -- Hit Ctrl-Alt-? and you get an onscreen map of the keyboard. Press a modifier key or combination of them and the map is highlighted and labeled, visually documenting the keyboard shortcuts. Beautifully intuitive! Every OS should do this! The webcam is quite good quality. The keyboard feel and layout will not surprise anyone who has used a monobody MacBook. The machine boots up from cold start in about 12s. It recovers from sleep, real sleep, mind you, in just over 1s. Turning on this computer is like impulse buying a candy bar. Fast and ultimately satisfying. The computer has a feeling of ruggedness about it while being arily light (3.8lbs) and generating less heat than any laptop or netbook I have ever used.

4. There are areas where it doesn't (yet). -- No Java? Seriously? No Java? Dammit, I wanted to play Puzzle Pirates! Crosh, the "shellish" CLI is hidden. Why? I spent a good two hours lamenting the fact that there wasn't one until the Interwebs told me Ctrl-Alt-t would get me an ssh client and network tools (which I was sorely missing, since my transmission was misconfigured to only allow rpc from localhost--all better now, thanks). Java will be fixed. The overall sluggish flash performance will improve. The media player and file manager will appear. I'm looking forward to all of them.

In the meantime, I'll keep fiddling with this odd free computer the Google folks decided to send me. Least I can do, really. It's really not far from being ready to roll. I have no doubt that when Google actually releases the OS, you're all in for a real treat.

Lentil Soup

2011-01-09T17:00:00.001-08:00

Easy, fast and delicious. Also very nearly the most healthy thing which has ever come out of France.

Ingredients:

1 lb dry lentils (any color, not split)
1/2 cup carrot, chopped
1/2 cup celery, chopped
1 cup onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
2 small tomatoes, seeded & chopped
1/2 tsp. Cumin seed
1/2 tsp. Coriander seed
1/2 tsp. Black or malagueta pepper
2 tsp. Kosher salt
2 qt. Chicken stock

Preparation:

Rinse and inspect lentils. Drain.

Toast and grind spices.

Sauté onion, carrot, celery, garlic & salt in 2 tbs. olive oil over med. high heat until well softened. Add lentils, spices, tomatoes, & stock. Bring to boil over high heat, then reduce to a bare simmer and cover for 40 min. Check tenderness of lentils. If a thicker soup is desired, hit it with an immersion blender for a few. Serve with fresh bread and a dollop of plain yogurt or sour cream.

An update...

2010-07-17T05:22:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been a while since I blogged. Things have happened apace.

Becky and I have well and truly entered our summer "work on the house" season. Last summer this meant pulling out crap trimwork, re-doing her office and scraping wallpaper covered with semi-gloss lavender texture paint off of our walls. This summer that effort is finally rewarded with WALLS WHICH ARE NOT PURPLE. The paint is done in the bulk of the house. Let there be much rejoicing.

The new paint looks good and makes me anxious to continue the changes in the other areas I know need attention, namely painting the guest room and our bedroom, finishing arrangements for window treatments and re-doing the bulk of the trimwork. Additionally, I'm going to be making some significant changes in the garage, painting, putting down rubber flooring, and setting up a proper workbench and tool storage.

As for infrastructural matters, the insulated siding, new window, doors and heavy insulation of the attic and ceiling spaces has paid off in a big way. My heating and cooling bills have dropped by around 40%. This saves us between $2-4k per year (depending mostly on Winter weather--the second half of this Winter was much colder and less hospitable than last year, but more comfortable). We've made significant progress on the landscaping, pulling out the ugly, worn-out boxwoods and azaleas and planting shrub roses in the front, patching bad grass spots, and preparing the back beds for a proper mulching.

The house is coming along. The big empty living room which we didn't know what we were going to do with when we bought the place (well, we didn't know what we were going to do with it after we found out it was just a bit too narrow for a pool table) has become something I never expected to have, much less like--a "formal" living room. It now contains my piano, a cabinet with Becky's horn and our various sheet music in it, some comfortable seating, the good stereo, our CD cabinet (which is industrial as library supply houses are the only companies that make CD storage in the volumes our music collection requires--I'm planning to sheath it in veneer this Winter), and a writing table that can expand to be a card or dining table (or Warhammer table *drool*) along with our various bits of native art and a big Georgia O'Keefe mule skull print. Particularly now that the walls are no longer life-sucking semi-gloss purple, the room is comfortable and probably the most pleasant place in the house to sit and read or listen to music. Last thing I ever want to put in that room? A TV.

I'll take pictures later this Summer for anyone interested.

Nice Things Gen. McChrystal Could Have Said About Joe Biden

2010-06-23T12:43:00.000-07:00

If you're like me you know how difficult it can be to think of something nice to say about the Vice President on short notice. To avoid losing command of your expeditionary force, try these handy starters:

1. Joe Biden has never bitten me hard enough to draw blood.
2. Joe Biden's current Botox looks considerably less creepy than his campaign-trail Botox did.
3. I consider a punch in the throat from Joe Biden a compliment.
4. Joe Biden has no obvious skin diseases.
5. Joe Biden is an anagram of "Job I Need."

Camping...

2010-06-15T05:50:00.000-07:00

When I was a wee, tiny lad my family went camping. My dad would get the tent (and later the pop-up camper) packed up, we'd light out to the beach (Edisto Island, SC) or an island in Lake Marion (via boat), put together our campsite and be family for a week or so. Now my grandfather has left me a share in some land in the Great Smoky Mtns. of Tennessee and I'd like to make use of it the same way. There's just one problem: Becky does not camp.

It's not her fault, really. She never went camping as a kid. When her family went on vacations they stayed in hotels/motels etc. She never spent a vacation using public (cold water) showers or pooping into a hole above a lime pit (more's the pity--such memories). I'm going to have to be pretty ingenious to overcome this. Stay tuned.

Success...

2010-06-06T07:29:00.000-07:00

The ginger ale is the real deal. I don't know why I left out lemon juice in my previous attempts. It's critical to the flavor. I'm not sure but I think the acidity helps with the yeast a bit too as this batch is considerably fizzier than my previous attempts--it overflowed the bottle when I first opened it. The resulting beverage can stand some changes still. It's not as spicy as I might prefer. I may give the whole cooking a ginger syrup thing a try and see if that extracts more of the gingerols. Alternatively I may look into adding more spices to the mix. For the record, however, the recipe in the last post is a winner.

Keys to success:

1. Clean the bottle and all utensils used. This is a fermented beverage (even though it's not making a noticable amount of alcohol) and fermentation requires sanitation.

2. Be patient. A lot of recipes I've found say 24-48 hours. This is nonsense. Give it the full 48 hours and your patience will be rewarded.

3. Fresh ingredients--fresh ginger, fresh squeezed lemon juice, etc.

Next try? Some spruce beer or sarsaparilla if I can find the ingredients. Maybe try my hand at some Italian style citrus sodas.

Ginger Ale...

2010-06-05T19:52:00.000-07:00

I'm having a hard time being patient right now. I have been experimenting lately with making my own soft drinks at home and I have my latest batch of ginger ale fermenting. I know I shouldn't open it until tomorrow afternoon or it won't be sufficiently fermented and fizzy. I'm pretty sure I have the recipe right this time. I've even gone as far as laying in a new supply of whiskey and vodka (Buffalo Trace and Svedka respectively--ABC store was out of Teton Glacier) for delicious mixed drinks.

Here's the recipe that's chugging away on top of my fridge at the moment:

Ginger Ale

Ingredients:
3/4 c. Sugar
2 L filtered water
1/4 tsp. baker's yeast
Juice of 1/2 a lemon
1 1/2-2" piece of ginger root, grated

Combine all ingredients in a clean, sanitized 2L soda bottle. Shake to thoroughly dissolve all sugar. Cap tightly and put in a warm, quiet place for 48 hours. After 48 hours release the pressure in the bottle carefully and transfer to the refrigerator where the cold will slow any further fermentation. Release pressure daily to avoid revolting messes. Ginger, sugar, and 1c. of the water can be cooked together ahead of time and filtered if you don't like ginger pulp, but I will laugh at you and call you a wimp.

I'll be reporting tomorrow how this turned out.

Recipe: Flounder a la Meuniere

2010-05-31T06:04:00.000-07:00

I made this as a main course last night to finish off the ratatouille. Yum! The classical French dish is sole a la meuniere, but actual sole is impossible (or at least very difficult) to find. Flounder is plenty close enough, readily available, and very sustainable (unlike, say, tuna, swordfish or other apex predator fish).

Flounder a la Meuniere

Ingredients:
1-2 Flounder filets per diner (depending on size)
4 Tbs butter (possibly more if you're cooking a lot of filets)
All-Purpose flour (to dredge)
Juice of 1 lemon
Chopped Parsley (optional)
1 tsp capers/2 filets, drained (optional)
Salt and pepper

Method:

Thaw the filets completely (if frozen) and pat them dry with paper towels). Season sparingly with salt and pepper and dredge lightly in all-purpose flour, shaking to remove any excess.

Melt 3 Tbs of butter in a non-stick pan over medium-low heat. Cook the butter until it stops foaming. Add 2-3 filets at a time to the pan and cook for 1-2 min per side depending on thickness.

Remove the cooked filets from the pan to a serving plate. When all filets are cooked, turn off the heat and add the remaining tablespoon of butter. Whisk it in and as soon as it is melted add the lemon juice and capers (if desired). Whisk quickly to incorporate and spoon over the warm fish filets. Sprinkle with chopped fresh parsley (if desired). Serve immediately.

I'm always amazed at how something this tasty can be this simple. If the browned milk solids in the butter are a bit much you can replace some of the butter with olive oil or clarified butter. In the classic dish this would actually be an entire sole with the skin on, but as flounder tend to be a good bit larger (and as a lot of people balk at eating a whole fish), filets work fine.

Recipe: Ratatouille

2010-05-30T06:15:00.000-07:00

Freely adapted from _The French Chef Cookbook_ by Julia Child

Ingredients:
1/2 lb. eggplant (after peeling)
1/2 lb. zucchini
1 med. onion, sliced thin
1 large green bell pepper (red is too sweet), sliced thin
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 14 oz. can of peeled whole tomatoes, drained and seeded. chopped
3 Tbs chopped parsley
Salt and Pepper
Vegetable oil
Breadcrumbs (optional)
Parmesan cheese (optional)

Method:
Remove the stems from the eggplant and zucchini. Peel the eggplant. Slice the eggplant and zucchini into 1/4-3/8" lengthwise strips. Place in a bowl and toss with a tablespoon or two of coarse salt. Allow to sit for 30-45 minutes. Drain and dry thoroughly with a paper towel. Brown the slices in a non-stick pan over medium heat with plenty of vegetable oil (the eggplant will soak up oil so replace as needed). Set the browned vegetable slices aside.

In the same pan, cook the onions and peppers until soft. Add the garlic, and season with salt and pepper. Go easy on the salt as the eggplant and zucchini will have absorbed a good bit. Scatter the chopped tomatoes on top and cover. Cook for 5 minutes, add parsley, then stir to integrate, cover, and cook uncovered for 2-3 more minutes until most liquid is absorbed or evaporated.

Preheat oven to 350 deg. Assemble the ratatouille in a large casserole as follows:

Place 1/3 of the tomato mixture in the bottom of the dish. Top with half of the zucchini slices. Add a layer of half of the eggplant slices running the opposite direction from the zucchini. Top with another 1/3 of the tomato mixture. Repeat the zucchini and eggplant layers going in the opposite direction from what you picked originally. Top with the rest of the tomato mixture. The end result should be a stack like this:

Tomato & Onions
Eggplant (N-S)
Zucchini (E-W)
Tomato & Onions
Eggplant (E-W)
Zucchini (N-S)
Tomato & Onions

Cover and bake in the center of the oven for 35 min. Remove and top with breadcrumbs and Parmesan cheese (if desired). Return to oven uncovered for 5 min. Finish under broiler for 2 min. Allow to rest before serving.

Tonight's Menu

2010-05-29T17:31:00.000-07:00

Made a particularly good dinner tonight, sufficiently tasty that I'm going to recount the menu:

Starter:
Cold plate of ham, blue cheese, swiss cheese, cornichons, and baguette slices.

Main Course:
Baked ratatouille of eggplant, zucchini, peppers, onions, and tomatoes.

Dessert:
Chocolate pudding with raspberries.

I made the ratatouille following Julia Child's recipe from The French Chef Cookbook but finished the assembled casserole in a 350 deg. oven rather than on the cooktop. 35min, covered, uncover and top with breadcrumbs and grated Parmesan cheese, back into the oven for 5 minutes, 2 min. under the broiler. Allow to rest before serving. Really, really good. Better the next day as a side dish (which this is going to be for some flounder filets.

Your moment of squee!

2010-05-28T14:17:00.000-07:00

Extraordinarily sleepy crimes against the people or the state must be avenged by agents extraordinarily sleepy. Two such individuals are Zoey Bulldog, top professional, and Emma Peanut, talented amateur.

Custom 3D Settlers of Catan board from scrap plywood

2010-05-27T12:14:00.000-07:00

When I finally get the garage cleared out and set back up so I can use my tools, watch out, people. Crap like this is going to happen.

Custom 3D Settlers of Catan board from scrap plywood

Labyrinths are awesome.

2010-05-26T18:55:00.000-07:00

A rare, SFW moment from Oglaf.com--the comic you wish you could stop laughing long enough to disapprove of.

A list...

2010-05-26T08:18:00.000-07:00

Found on the floor at the school where my wife teaches, I present the most pathetic list I think I've ever seen:

keep promises
don't mutter bad thing under your breath
DON'T FOLLOW PEOPLE
don't be desperate
don't pretend your excessively poor
be ~~gra~~ greatful
don't overly complain about your life

I'd love to believe that this was a joke, but I don't. The third bullet, in particular is excessively creepy. All grammatical and spelling errors are [sic].

Some things I'd recommend...

2010-05-25T12:43:00.000-07:00

Nothing of note to really talk about so I'm going to make a few product recommendations:

Lamy Safari Fountain Pen
I didn't think anything could replace my Dr. Grip 0.5mm mechanical pencil in my heart of hearts but this thing has. If you get one, buy the Lamy Z-24 converter and use bottled ink. It works great and creates no garbage (unlike cartridges).

Fox Creek Leather
Becky bought me a motorcycle jacket from here a couple of years ago. It is probably the best-made garment I have ever owned. If you want a jacket to ride or just to look cool, you cannot do better. The quality is insane and they are made in the USA.

Goorin Bros.
I have two hats from this company and they are both of superior quality and design.

Acer Aspire One D250
It makes a great Ubuntu netbook (everything works) and it is a reference platform for Chromium OS development which means when Chrome OS officially drops, it should run beautifully on this machine as well.

Trying to ease back into this blogging thing.

ROI: Is Gold the Next Bubble? - WSJ.com

2010-05-25T09:12:00.000-07:00

ROI: Is Gold the Next Bubble? - WSJ.com

The short answer, IMO, is yes. Attention teabaggers and paultards: if you are putting money in gold you'd better look really closely at how easy it is to get back out. 'Nuff said.

and back to $4 gas...

2009-11-12T05:14:00.000-08:00

like anyone who has actually bothered to read these last few posts, i'm getting tired of this subject so today i'm going to wrap it up by talking about how we can reduce energy consumption.

as i stated initially, our biggest energy sink in the us is transport. we do a lot of it and we don't do it particularly efficiently. if we want to move our energy budget closer to that of the rest of the developed world we are going to have to adopt some of their practices. we have different transport problems to solve than europe or japan, but there is still a great deal we can learn from how they solve the problems we share.

1. expensive gas

after the first oil crunch in the 1970's europe responded by keeping fuel prices high and using the tax revenues generated to pay for massive expansion and subsidy of mass transit. expensive fuel led, not surprisingly, to an automobile market dominated by small, light, efficient vehicles, greater adoption of mass transit, etc. if we want to get off of oil we are going to have to do something similar. the reality is that what people the world over want cars which are bigger and more powerful. the problem is that such cars are also heavy and burn fuel less efficiently. whenever consumers go to make a purchase they consider pros and cons. if the con is that filling the tank up costs you $100 every 3 days, chances are you'll choose something else.

i have heard a lot of iffy responses to the idea that in order to fix our problems we have to keep gas as expensive as the economy will bear. i'd like to address a few of them:

expensive fuel will drive up prices everywhere:

yes, that's very true in the short run. in the long run, we'll adapt and prices will stabilize. there will be economic pain associated with that adaptation and everyone will feel it. i think it is considerably less than the economic pain of failing to adapt.

instead of raising the price of fuel, why don't we provide tax incentives for buying better cars:

we absolutely should be doing this (see point 2 - fleet replacement). the problem is that without expensive gas as an incentive, it can't be anywhere near as effective. any reasonable solution will include both.

hydrogen cars:

hydrogen is a boondoggle--remember that i'm talking about oil dependance here, not emissions. hydrogen is just another fuel for burning in cars. it's expensive to produce, hard to handle, hard to store, and just as a kicker, has a much lower energy density than hydrocarbons. it's only clean at the point of use. making it is as dirty as making anything else energy intensive. i don't believe that it can be exploited to a positive effect on our energy budget.

2. fleet replacement

according to the us bureau of transport statistics there were roughly 235 million cars, trucks and suvs registered in the us in 2006. in order to improve our energy use we have to replace as many as possible of these vehicles with machines which either use less oil or (preferably) none. i recently did the math on the government's cash for clunkers program in response to an erroneous email that was forwarded to me. the federal govt. spent about $3 billion to subsidize the replacement of vehicles with more efficient ones. i'll happily post the details if anyone is interested, but the upshot is this. even at an artificially low price of oil (again, i used $50/barrel) the replacement more than paid its own costs over 6 years and saved about 11 million barrels of oil per year. there were a little under 700,000 cars involved in cash for clunkers. the average before and after fuel economies were 15 and 25 mpg. providing a similar improvement to all 235 million cars in that 2006 fleet would cost about a trillion dollars (yes, with a t). it would also reduce our oil demand by 50%. that's not a joke, it's not a boondoggle, it's not bullshit. if you replace 235 million cars at 15mpg with 235 million cars at 25mpg you save 3.7 billion barrels of oil (bearing in mind that only about 20 gallons of each barrel are gasoline). we use 20 million barrels of oil a day. which is 7.3 billion barrels per year. do the math. fleet replacement should be a priority as it is one of the most certain ways of reducing not only our energy budget but specifically our dependance on oil.

if a trillion dollars seems like a lot, well, it is. it's a hell of a lot. it's about what we've spent to date on the wars in iraq and afghanistan. it's about 8 times the total cost of the apollo program. it's about 14% of our gdp for 2009. i think the costs of not doing it will be higher.

3. aggressive expansion of nuclear and concentrating solar power development

if we aggressively expand our use of nuclear power, focusing on breeder reactors we can replace fossil fuels for a significant portion of our power supply. similarly, if we aggressively deploy concentrating solar power (in my opinion the most efficient and cost effective option is stirling-dish power) we can get similar benefits from a resource which we currently practically ignore.

4. replacement of air travel with telecommuting and rail

air travel is spectacularly wasteful. this is just a fact of life for heavier than air aircraft. they have to use a lot of power simply to not fall out of the sky. aircraft are fast and reasonably convenient. in order to stop using them so much we're going to have to get over our national obsession with going fast. travel has not always been a case of wait in line, get locked in a crowded metal box for 6 hours, then wait in line again. passenger rail can be made much faster than it already is. it can also be made more comfortable and better able to accommodate the needs of modern travelers. we have seen little to no significant change in passenger rail since the advent of amtrak 30 years ago. passenger rail needs to be opened up to private entrepreneurship. this has been done very successfully in britain and can be successful here.

a few last words on ethanol, expensive gas, and fusion:

ethanol is great at replacing oil. the problem is that it doesn't drive improvements in efficiency--it just replaces an existing inefficient energy source with another one. ethanol may be part of the de-fossilization of our power supply but don't expect it to be the core of it. it's expensive and it comes at the expense of a lot of other things we need more, like food.

expensive gas is necessary to drive the move to efficiency. economic incentives work and ones that come as costs work best. expanding domestic oil production can only decrease the price of oil--and then we're back to where we were. more importantly, oil is a finite resource. we will need that oil later for manufacturing plastics and all kinds of other things. burning it up in suburbans isn't merely wasteful--it's stupid and shortsighted.

fusion could, potentially make all of this talk irrelevant. i am hopeful that it will--however, when i was a wee child watching public tv, fusion was "25 years away." when i was in high school fusion was "25 years away." fusion is _still_ 25 years away--whatever that means. i have high hopes for polywell. i have high hopes for the national ignition facility. they are not, however, indicators as to how we should proceed. the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. if past behavior is any kind of indicator, fusion has a longer way to go than i or anyone else would like. if somebody shows me a reactor repeatably producing more energy than is put into it, i will happily (nay, joyfully) revise my opinion...but until that happens it's all pie in the sky. i wish the people working on this great success...but that doesn't mean i'm going to bet a pair of 3's.

well, that's about it. i'm tired of this topic...mortally so. read http://withouthotair.com. next time i'm going to talk about my dog or something.

i fail it...

2009-11-11T05:31:00.000-08:00

it is writing a blog post every day

so, back to the oil thing (and i'm going to try and wrap this up fairly soon as i'm getting tired of it).

what are some things that will work to help us get off of fossil hydrocarbons:

1. solar

i'm not talking about anything radical here. solar has plenty of drawbacks, most notably the one about the sun not shining all the time. one of the several things we do have a fair amount of in the us is desert. desert is excellent for making solar. right now we're doing very little with it. an area 600 km x 600 km (roughly the area of arizona) completely filled with concentrating solar power would provide sufficient electricity to give 500 million americans 250kwh/p/d. the problem is that this is a) expensive, and b) roughly as hard to sell to the sierra club as drilling in anwr. nevertheless, a massive expansion of our solar energy production is one way of getting away from oil.

2. nuclear fission

nuclear power is a mystery to a lot of people. we don't understand what's happening in those reactors, so we fear them. when reactors have accidents they can be anything from the horror of chernobyl to well...we just don't know. lets start by discussing what types of nuclear power are available. i'm going to talk about 3 types of reactors: once-through (u-235), breeder (u-235 and u-238) and thorium (th-232).

once-through and breeder reactors both burn uranium fuel. uranium occurs naturally in several different isotopes, the most common of which is u-238. u-238 accounts for over 99% by mass of all uranium extracted from the earth's crust. u-238 is not fissile, that is to say that it will not split apart in an energetic, ongoing chain reaction. u-238 is weakly radioactive and rather nastily toxic (like most heavy metals). u-235 accounts for about 0.7% of uranium. u-235 is readily fissile. whack it with a neutron and you will get a very high-energy fission reaction.

once-through reactors burn uranium fuel which has been enriched--that is to say the naturally occurring u-235 has been concentrated in the sample to about 3-5% of the total mass. by comparison, the uranium used in atomic weapons is usually around 85% u-235. the once-through reactors burn only the fissile u-235 isotope. these are the most common type of nuclear reactors providing power in the world today.

breeder reactors are different. breeder reactors burn unenriched uranium. if they relied only on fission of u-235 they would be extremely inefficient (in fact, they wouldn't work for generating power at all). breeder reactors, however, rely on the fact that while u-238 is not fissile in and of itself, it is what nuclear chemists and physicists call "fertile." by bombarding u-238 with deuterons (the nucleus of a deuterium atom--ie, ionized heavy water) the u-238 can be transmuted into plutonium-239. pu-239 is readily fissile and can be used for power. in this way, breeder reactors are able to more completely consume uranium fuel and still produce power.

thorium reactors, obviously, use thorium as fuel instead of uranium. more specifically, they bombard thorium-232 with slow neutrons to make u-233 which, like u-235, is fissile. thorium reactors have not been used for power production in the us but they are common in india (which has the worlds largest resources of thorium). thorium is 5 or 6 times more abundant in the earth's crust than uranium which makes it an attractive fuel source--i'm not going to get into it in detail, however, as the us has a lot of uranium and exactly zero thorium reactors.

here are some problems--right now, nuclear power provides 20% of america's electricity--about 7.5kwh/p/d. doing this consumes some 19.5k tons of uranium fuel every year. the problem is that we only produced 2000 tons of uranium this year. the rest was provided from existing stockpiles. uranium production has fallen off sharply since the early 1980's when a virtual halt to nuclear power development in the us caused the price of uranium to fall sharply. there's plenty of uranium in the us to be had, we just aren't getting it because it's not economical to mine and process it. in order to produce enough power to supply our current lifestyle, we would have to increase output of nuclear power 33x.

that being said, there have been discussions of "peak uranium." the fact is there's still a lot of uranium to get at, depending on the price. uranium is delivered in the form of uranium oxide (u3o8) called "yellowcake." the current price of yellowcake uranium is a little under $50/lb ($110/kg). at that price the only economically viable means of uranium harvesting is in-situ leaching (which is just what it sounds like--a big pit full of dilute chemicals which leach uranium out of uranium-rich soil). at a slightly higher price (say $75-80/lb) it becomes profitable to mine and process uranium ore. at $120-130/lb it is profitable to extract uranium from phosphates (and this was a common industry in the us from the end of world war 2 until the uranium price crash). a little-known but very true fact is that seawater contains about 3.3mg of uranium per cubic meter. it is possible to extract uranium from seawater--japanese scientists have done so using apparatus which, if it scales adequately, would make it economical at around $180-200/lb. the upshot of all this is that the fuel is there if we want it badly enough. if we use fast breeder reactors to burn it (breeders get about 60x as much power from the same mass of unenriched uranium as once-through reactors) that uranium can last a long time.

so, we could do it with nuclear if we are willing to invest very heavily in the production of new nuclear power plants, aggressively extract and process uranium, and, very preferably, commercialize extraction of uranium from seawater. right now we are doing none of those things. the last new nuclear power plant in the united states became operational in 1996.

3. geothermal and hydroelectric

most of the good opportunities for hydro power have already been exploited in the us. those resources make a fair amount of power, but we shouldn't expect to see any notable increase. geothermal resources are expensive to exploit, but there are significant geothermal sites in the western us which we could be generating power from.

4 wind

wind suffers from the same problem of intermittency and high startup costs as solar. unlike solar, wind farms are also amazingly noisy. modern windmills are also pretty mechanically unreliable. the technology is still maturing. until some of the problems are fixed i would expect only slow increases in the amount of wind power available. even were we to massively expand onshore wind and cover the coastlines with offshore wind (and that's talking about an area devoted to onshore wind roughly the size of california and offshore wind along all the shallow coastlines) it would still only generate about 48kwh/p/d. it would also entail a 200x increase in the number of wind resources in the us. not very realistic, imo.

the reality is that sufficiently aggressive expansion of any of these four generating methods is unlikely to address our problems unless we can make significant changes to our consumption. i haven't even touched on the problem of nuclear waste because, frankly, it pales in comparison to the problem of nuclear power expansion. there is no magic bullet here which will allow us to suddenly stop depending on oil and keep up an extravagantly wasteful lifestyle. if we really want to get off of oil we have to start by fixing consumption. tomorrow i'll write the last of this series of blog posts and talk about how we get from 250khw/p/d down to the 125kwh/p/d of the average european or japanese citizen.

up from the ground come a bubblin' crude...

2009-11-08T04:52:00.000-08:00

my last blog went over the problem we face with energy consumption in america. again, i highly recommend dr. david mackay's book sustainable energy without the hot air. it is full of math, physics, and win. today i'm going to do a quick survey of popular "solutions" that won't work.

1. increased domestic oil exploration, especially in the anwr

this one is popular in those commercials you see from bp trying to convince you that bp isn't an oil company at all...no indeed, they're doing wind and solar and whatnot! let's look at the numbers, shall we? the best usgs estimate of the amount of oil that can be economically recovered from the area encompassed by anwr is 9.2 billion barrels (a barrel of oil is 42 gallons, btw). i feel like being generous, so why don't we bump that number up to 15 billion barrels just so that there's no quibbling about pessimism. that's a lot of oil, no doubt. it'll cost billions of dollars and take on the close order of two decades to get it, but it is, no bull, a lot of oil. the problem is that america uses 20 million barrels of oil every day. even if we get that optimistic 15 billion barrels number out of anwr, it could only provide for our domestic oil consumption for a hair (in this case a hair is 18.25 days) over two years. let's be equally optimistic and say that we can get another 20 billion barrels by aggressive offshore drilling (there is, by the way, no current evidence that there's even half that much to be had). 35 billion barrels of oil would provide our needs for 4.78 years.

i'm sure i don't need to explain to anyone that 4.78 years isn't going to cut it. not when the cost of getting it is billions of dollars spent on oil exploration over two decades (not to mention oil rigs along the bulk of our coastlines and screwing up one of the last undeveloped wildernesses in north america). so oil exploration isn't going to fix this problem. why, then, is it so frequently touted by politicians and energy lobbyists? that, my friends, is even simpler math: 35 billion barrels of oil at a price of $50/barrel (and the current price as of the close of trading Friday was $77/barrel) equates to 1.75 trillion dollars. trillion with a "t." pushing for more domestic oil exploration especially on public lands is nothing more or less than a money grab. it won't help our dependence on foreign oil and tomorrow i'll explain why it'll almost certainly hurt it.

2. price controls

i'm only bringing this out to dismiss it. if you're ignorant enough of economics to think that price controls can have any kind of positive effect on a market you should be reading someone else's blog (not that anyone's reading this one). better still, go watch this.

3. ethanol

i'm actually marginally in favor of ethanol for the us, so i need to explain a little bit why it's in this section. ethanol is useful as fuel. it's not as energy dense as the hydrocarbons in gasoline but it is a renewable resource. e85, the primarily ethanol fuel mixture, is a huge positive in that it reduces the amount of petroleum distillates an average car uses by 75% (your gas already contains about 10% ethanol). the ethanol problem is not its viability as a fuel but its production. we are expected to have an ethanol production capacity this year of 10.5 billion gallons (estimated eoy figures from the renewable fuels association--a trade association for fuel ethanol producers). remember when i mentioned above that we consume 20 million barrels of oil every day? well, each of those barrels yields about 18.5 gallons of gasoline and another gallon and a half of diesel fuel. so let's call it 20 gallons of fuel per barrel to try and replace with ethanol. that's 146 billion gallons of fuel. replacing 75% of that with ethanol would require 109 billion gallons of ethanol. or approximately 10x our current production of ethanol. there's a reason t. boone pickens doesn't like ethanol friends, and this is it.

here's the problem--right now we're making ethanol primarily from corn. that is to say we're taking food, mashing it up, converting it into alcohol, and then burning it in cars. in order to do ten times as much of that we would have to convert a large amount of land which currently produces food into land which produces fuel stocks. this will raise domestic food prices, obviously, and i'm not convinced the agricultural resources to support a tenfold increase in ethanol production exist. even if they do, it will take a long time to get there.

so, if drilling, communism, and corn aren't going to get us out of this mess, what can? tune in tomorrow.

$4 gas

2009-11-07T05:17:00.000-08:00

here goes another day of blog posting...

one of the downsides to living in the dc metro area is that we get a lot of public policy advertising which is ostensibly intended to raise public awareness of issues but is actually just another arm of the lobbying industry. lately i have been seeing a lot of ads talking about $4/gal. gasoline and how people should put pressure on gerry connolly (dem. va, dist. 11) to vote against the current version of the energy bill making its way through the wheels of legislation. i'm sure other people in other districts are seeing similar ads targeting their own congressdroids. i have a problem with these ads for several reasons--but mostly because they're trying to scare people into avoiding reformation of energy policy which is vital to national security--more on that in a bit--and not communicating the economic reality to people. i recently read dr. david mackay's sustainable energy without the hot air, and recommend it heartily to people. here's my take on this issue:

firstly, let's state the problem clearly. it'll help here if you've read dr. mackay's book as he does all of the background math and source citation for this stuff and i'm too lazy to link it all here--just read it, i cannot promise you will be glad you did as no one has ever equated knowledge with bliss, but you will come away from the experience with a better understanding of energy policy. after converting all energy use to the same units (mackay uses kilowatt-hours per person per day which i'll represent as kwh/p/d ) we find that the average american uses about 250 kwh/p/d. the average european uses around 125 kwh/p/d. that's right. on average we each consume about twice as much energy as europeans--and we're not talking about grubby macedonian goatherds here. that number is for developed europe. a very little bit of looking reveals that the bulk of that difference comes from transportation. we drive farther, we drive bigger, less efficient cars, we use less mass transit and we fly a lot (and one ideally full airline flight consumes 75% of the energy that an average person uses per year in driving an average sedan). so...that's the problem. we use a lot of energy and, for the most part, we use it getting around. there are other differences that make americans less energy-efficient than europeans but transport is so large they shrink to insignificance.

if we want to change our energy budget we have to change transport--and we have to change it dramatically.

so, how do we do this? for starters we're going to have to drive less and drive better cars. that means smaller, more efficient cars, preferably ones that use lower-entropy energy sources like electricity instead of burning petroleum. say goodbye to the suv and the minivan and hello to the compact station wagon you remember so fondly from the early 80's. we're also going to have to build and use more mass transit. a city bus might require 10 times the energy per mile of your car but it carries a lot more passengers when used efficiently. since we're talking about kwh per _person_ per day it's clearly a much more energy efficient mode of travel. personally i'd love to see the streetcar make a comeback--anyone who has visited san francisco has used the muni. it's really convenient and very efficient. i've used similar systems in prague, amsterdam, and vienna and i've always found them similarly convenient and efficient. they can go more places than a subway, are much cheaper (and faster) to build, and pretty much make driving pointless if you live in the city.

air travel is a different kind of problem altogether. if you take a single commercial airline flight per year, you've burned up 75% of the energy that you would use making an average 40km commute in your car that _year_--and that's true for each person on the plane. if the plane isn't full, the numbers just get worse. there really isn't much that we can do to make the planes more efficient. incremental increases in efficiency--a percent here and there--will continue to happen, but airplanes are a pretty mature technology. airliners are roughly as efficient as they can be--the enormous amount of fuel they burn is simply what it takes to push something big enough to carry those people through the air without falling down. we're going to have to come up with some alternatives.

i frequently see people wondering why we didn't respond to the first oil crunch in the 70's the way europe did--expensive fuel, smaller cars, and a massive investment in mass transit. the obvious answer (as my brilliant economics teacher wife pointed out to me) is that we have different problems to solve than europe does. any given european nation is radically smaller and more densely populated than the us. mass transit is more effective and more cost-effective in such an environment. in order to have a fast rail transit system, the us would have to subsidize it to a much higher level than european union nations have simply to cover the enormous distances between our population centers. that doesn't mean we shouldn't have fast rail...just that any fast rail we have isn't going to be anything like eurorail (which is a shame, because traveling by eurorail is inexpensive, fun, and convenient--which is what travel ought to be). i don't think rail can replace air flight for americans. it's too slow, too spread out, bound to tracks, etc.

so that's the problem in a nutshell. america is big and americans haven't dealt with our transport problem in very efficient ways. this is getting long so i think i'll address a few more topics on this subject tomorrow--also, i realize that the starting point of this post--$4 gas ads has been largely left behind. i promise i will be coming back to it.

turd sandwich and giant douche...

2009-11-06T04:54:00.000-08:00

it is national blog posting month and while i have been long out of the habit of writing something significant on a daily basis (let's say for about 20 years now) i've decided to try and get back into the habit of writing by trying to post something worthwhile every day for a month. here goes:

like surprisingly few people in virginia, i voted this week. our gubernatorial race was a mess (as usual). on the one hand you have bob mcdonnell whose politics hearken back to the bad old days of republicans as culture warriors and pat robertson's presidential campaign. that being said, mcdonnell's stand on taxes and particularly on improving the transportation situation in northern va is similar to my own and this is an issue that affects me directly. he is a giant douche.

on the other hand you have creigh deeds--a man whose ideas are extremely vague and whose campaign was pretty much entirely based on pointing out that mcdonnell's social values were out of line with those of his own base. you have no idea what you're getting with deeds. at the same time, deeds has the backing of the last two governors of va who, in my opinion, have done a very good job in the state house. he is a turd sandwich.

now, ordinarily, i find it easy to follow robert a. heinlein's voting rubric: if there isn't someone you want to vote for there is almost certainly someone you want to vote against. in this case, however, all i really wanted was to vote against the paucity of available choices, so i did something that i've never done before--i flipped a coin and voted for the winner of the toss. i suppose i could try and couch this as an appeal to a higher power for guidance but, in fact, it was an attempt to avoid responsibility for either not voting or for voting for one of the above options. i'm not sure if i should be ashamed of having done this--but i know i felt pretty solid about it at the time.

the other races were easier. i voted for the incumbent lieutenant governor since i've heard him on kojo nande's radio show multiple times and am impressed with his moderate conservatism--appropriate in an executive. i voted against the candidate for va house delegate who had sent me the most junk mail (republican tom rust), and i voted for the fairfax county school bond issue (i'd much rather they borrow money for schools than for 90% of the other things the county does).

i was also confronted with one of my least favorite things about voting this time out--sample ballots. both the democrats and the republicans were at the polling place, handing out the damned things, hoping, i suppose to save some drones or illiterates the trouble of reading the ballot inside. there were dozens of discarded ones all over the ground and after telling the party hacks that no, i wasn't interested in one, i made sure to point out to them that they were littering. the republican hack lamely picked one up...but just one.

for those interested, turd sandwich won the toss, but giant douche won the election.