DanBailey.net

10/6

I was always highly impressed with the Icepick project. It’s a neat concept, and if you don’t mind the whole world knowing that you went to the can at 3:30am, it’s even a little fun. As I’ve grown older, I’ve realized more and more that it’s highly unlikely that I’ll ever find a girlfriend/spouse that will allow such intrusions into our life.

Thus, in the name of compromise, I am going to keep my geek haus a little more low-key. I just want to have some neat stuff.

1. Free public wifi. I already have wifi in my domicile, which is all well and good. But being the generous sort, I’m all for sharing my access with the neighbors. I’m also a big fan of a.) having plenty of bandwidth, and b.) keeping my LAN secure. So the plan is to build a small Wintel box, one that doesn’t draw too much power (Atom chip?), with minimal RAM and hard drive space, that I’ll be turning into a router. Public access will be severely throttled, with some services (torrents) disabled, and a lot of sites (porn) blocked. There will be serious firewalling of the rest of the network.

2. Time-lapse webcam. This will be an external-facing camera, looking out the front window of the place. It will update on a regular basis, plus will take a picture at the exact same time every day, so I can do a cool time-lapse movie of the exterior comings-and-goings over the course of our time in the new place. (Subject to Kate’s approval.)

3. Data hidey hole. We won’t be using landlines — Kate and I are both cellular-only types. I’m going to go ahead and get an outlet plate, a decent-sized keychain drive from Micro Center, and spend a little time setting one of these up, just for the geeky factor. (Must remember to disconnect it and restore phone line before moving out.)

Any other suggestions?

09/19

I could survive for 1 minute, 38 seconds chained to a bunk bed with a velociraptor

08/28

Screencap from Yahoo!, by the author. Click for larger images and more detail.

In the technology world, there’s this talk of ubiquitous computing — having supercomputer processing at your fingertips, wherever you are, and paired with access to the world’s knowledge. If the systems continue to pair data like above, I think that the usefulness (or lack thereof) will render such systems stillborn.

To explain my statement above, I must rely on anecdote. I was reading an article about Karl Rove trying to squash Joe Lieberman’s VP chances, and saw the phrase, “John McCain’s high command”, wherein ‘high command’ was hyperlinked. I clicked the link and got a pop-up window talking about the German high command of the Third Reich. Now, I may think that the Republicans are borderline fascists, but calling them Nazis isn’t applicable until they start a full-blown pogrom.

In other bad pairings, Microsoft recently announced it’ll be answering Apple’s well-received Mac vs. PC ads with it’s own ads featuring Jerry Seinfeld. This, of course, is proof that Microsoft is capable of making bad pairings with interesting undertones, as well.

When I first heard the news, I was like, “Jerry Seinfeld? Dear god, he hasn’t done anything worthwhile in a decade.”

“Ohhhhhhhh.”

Because neither has Microsoft.

Jerry Seinfeld: tedious, has more money than God, currently ineffectual in producing anything worthwhile, peaked more than a decade ago, is riding on past successes, and is only liked by insecure 17-year olds.

Microsoft: tedious, has more money than God, currently ineffectual in producing anything worthwhile, peaked more than a decade ago, is riding on past successes, and is only liked by insecure 17-year olds.

08/26

The two greatest technologies are wireless Internet and indoor plumbing. And despite the 100+ years separating their respective inceptions, they’re really quite compatible.

Not that I’d know or anything. I’m just sayin’.

07/30

I bought a 16-gig White iPhone 3G the Tuesday following their release, and while I was initially wowed by it, the glow has started to wear off, and I’m thinking I have something approaching a lemon.

While I am impressed with the concept, the execution has left me cold, both from a hardware and software standpoint.

From the hardware side, my only complaint thus far is in regards to the cracking issue (more here). I’m infuriated. You’d think that Apple would have learned its lesson after the debacle with the G4 Cube systems. But no. Now I’m stuck with an iPhone that’s going to look progressively more and more shitty as time goes on because someone at Apple either decided that using a cheaper plastic was acceptable, or that they could skip the QA process.

On the software side, I have a laundry list of complaints. Those are:

• When purchasing from the iTunes store directly to the iPhone, I would frequently lose the song from both the iPhone and iTunes when trying to sync the purchases. I think (but am not 100% sure) that this is due to trying to do the sync while the iPhone is backing itself up.
• Oh, and here’s another one — why in the name of Christ do I need to sit through a tedious, time-consuming backup every time I dock my iPhone? There ought to be a setting in the config that lets me select my own backup interval, rather than be stuck with someone’s “good idea” as to what constitutes “back up often”.
• Dear god, has Apple’s coding really gotten so bad that the keyboard lags? Because I, and many others, are seeing that. I even experienced it last night while trying to dial a phone number from the keypad.
• This thing loses its connection constantly and I mean constantly. I can be walking through the middle of the parking lot at work, and about half the time I have five bars, and the other half I have “No Service”.

Now, let me state explicitly that I have treated this phone with kid gloves — with what I paid for this phone, I’m treating it with kid gloves and am not going to do anything to put it in harm’s way.

So. This was my first iPhone and it might very well be my last. What I expected from Apple would be what I’ve historically gotten from them — rock-solid hardware and software that performs well and is aesthetically pleasing. With what I’ve received, in the case of the iPhone 3G, I’m so beyond disappointed that it’s not even funny.

(Pictures of the cracking in my case to follow.)

07/22

Testing my ability to photoblog via iPhone.

07/7

Seth Godin’s got a good piece on two easy-to-start web businesses. If I ever need to start freelancing on the side again, I’ll probably do one or the other.

Need a good Tour de France fix? Cyclingnews should be your first stop.

ABCNews, in its commitment to journalist excellence, provides us with the Animal Kingdom’s Odd Couples. Okay, so it’s not earth-shattering news, but it’s good for a serious “awwwwww” response.

And here’s a great piece on Sign-Up Form Design from the folks at Smashing Magazine.

06/2

A short while ago, John Scalzi had a post in his blog about the book Mirrored Heavens, in which there was much bantering by readers about regarding the ability of Russia to regain “superpower” status. While that was all entertaining, I felt it missed the point, and asked about whether it made sense to militarize space in a case where we’ve moved on to Fourth Generation Warfare (4GW). The author of the book, David Williams, responded to that question (poorly worded as it was) in his blog. And now I feel the need to respond here. Read the rest of this entry »

05/29

So I’m shilling for Firefox. I think it’s a great piece of software, and it’s my browser of choice regardless of platform (except my iPod Touch, where I’m stuck with Safari…*gag*). That, and I think the badge is really cute. They ought to make a slightly modified version of this as an icon for the app.