This one is for Steve Hayman. Just so he knows when he is my territory. I could also make it “DCA” since he is most likely to enter via that route. 571 would also have been an option (as an overlay areacode), but 703 will always be “Northern Virginia” to me.
Archive
I’ve seen people use them, read about them, and now I’m going to try one. I like to take notes on paper in meetings because most computer use in the meetings I’m in is people doing other things (not being a part of or paying attention in meetings).
I’ve used notepaper I printed and put in a 3 ring organizer I have and it works pretty well, but it is a bit big. I want to get to the point I carry just a few things:
- iPhone (to replace the Blackberry and iPod Touch I usually have now)
- MacBook Air (to replace the 6.5 lb Dell I have now)
- Moleskine (to replace the full size organizer I have now)
Since the first won’t happen until I work for a company that supports the iPhone as an option, and the second won’t happen until I shell out the bucks myself, I figure I’ll start at the bottom and work my way up the list.
So I’m looking at options to make the most of this, since it does need to have some components of my organizer (quick reference sheets, business card holder, etc). The iPod Touch/Blackberry will probably take the load on contacts and other bulk info (as I’ve used it more for recently).
Here’s to a new system that I will hopefully stick to and get value from.
I was taking a break from my normal work to spend what I thought would be 15 minutes to enable SSL on a server. Should have been straight forward, I’ve done this before.
The technical part can be seen in the following:
Short form of steps (fourth entry), or the more complete: Apache2 SSL in Ubuntu.
I was going “cheap” and using RapidSSL. They give you the prep steps for Apache2. With that done, I filled out the on-line form. But now I’m stuck… I can’t get past the contact form. It keeps saying I need to enter a valid phone number. I’ve put in 10 digits (and sometimes an extra “1″ at the front) in just about every way I can think of. No luck.
I call their support line, press “1″ for “new” and 5 seconds later I’m disconnected. Perhaps they don’t want new customers?
UPDATEOver lunch I tried again. This time it worked, accepting just the numbers (which is what I did previously). Instead of selecting “Use Admin contact as Billing contact” I explicitly added a new contact with the same info. Bottom line… if you say there is an error in format, please give an example of what a correct format is.
Bush’s Surveillance Act | The Onion: “American citizens cannot be spied on, with the exception of all of them”
I’m all for protecting our country and those in it (citizens and visitors). My concern is the use of fear as the primary force driving policy. FISERV has important aspects, but it looks to go too far. We need checks and balances. The checks are not for the law enforcement who always “do the right thing” which are the majority. But there is a minority and they need checks. There are options for these checks, but having it outside of the organization is better than inside for something like privacy. The echo chamber is too powerful.
I don’t think I have anything to hide, but that doesn’t mean I can’t keep “my business” and that of my family and friends to myself.
While the Onion is funny, there is often an undercurrent of truth which make the humor possible. This is one of those cases.
Danah Boyd has a nice piece on the mass sharing of the “social graph” at just because we can, doesn’t mean we should. One section:
The odd thing about forced exposure is that it creates a scenario where everyone is a potential celebrity, forced into approaching every public interaction with the imagined costs of all future interpretations of that ephemeral situation. This is not just a matter of illegal acts, but even minor embarrassing ones. Both have psychological costs. Celebrities become hermits to cope (and when they break… well, we’ve all seen Britney). Do we really want the entire society to become hermits to cope with exposure?
This is an important topic. How much privacy should we have? Should we be guaranteed any level of privacy? Just because information is available, should it all be trivial to access? At what cost? I expect the genie will leave the bottle and never return.
Freeing information and allowing it to evolve by connecting all of the dots has value, but Danah brings up the reality often ignored that everything has a cost and consequences. The job of a civil society is to make a balanced choice…deliver good to most while protecting the weak.
I updated my Apple TV to “Take Two.” The positive surprise was the “AirTunes” feature so I can push music to my TV…and you can even have it played in sync with the computer (multiple speakers). I may need to get AirFoil to stream random audio to my TV.
But the one thing I want isn’t there. When you have a music video in a playlist, it doesn’t play one after another. I want to be able to set a series of music videos (or podcasts for that matter) and have them play in order. Two uses:
- Better parties
- Custom “TV channels” based on podcast related playlists.>/li>
What bugs me is that it DOES work on on both iTunes AND the iPod Nano. At least I’m not the only one who wants this.
SiliconValley.com – First Edition Newsletter: “Yahoo Chief Executive Jerry Yang signaled to Microsoft Wednesday that he is in no hurry to accept its $44.6 billion takeover offer. His message came as the company was sued by several shareholders criticizing Yang for not working harder to secure a better offer or to improve Yahoo’s performance.”
Anytime there is a significant transaction or “bad news” for a company, someone should start a pool on how long it will take for the first lawsuit to happen. So predictable. If you don’t think the company is run well, why do you own stock in it?
I watched the video talked about in this article…
HTC Magnum rumours rife following giant phone gag | Reg Hardware: “A group of self-confessed pranksters have admitted that their mock-up of a monster HTC tablet, dubbed the Magnum, doesn’t signal the manufacturer’s release of a super ‘pocket’ PC. However, the web’s now clogged with rumours to the contrary.”
And it became pretty obvious to me what I was looking at. I could be wrong, but the clue was that it came out right before the World Mobile Congress (formerly 3GSM) in Barcelona. If you were going to have a booth at a show and your product is very small, why not have a “blown up version” as a prop on display?
Unlike the massive iPhone’s in the window of Apple stores, it is neat that it is a fully functional version.
I keep thinking about the MacBook Air. It meets just about every one of my criteria. Just a little light on performance (memory capacity being the one that comes most to mind), but the tradeoffs made are very reasonable to me. My problem has been the cost of the solid state drive. It is just such a premium for something that will come down so fast in price over the next 12-18 months.
But now that I see how straight forward disassembly is at iFixit.com, I’m thinking I could get it now with the HD and upgrade the drive in a year when the prices of the SSD come down and people are offering replacements.
Hmmm, could be a good plan.
I wanted to see four things out of MacWorld this month. Here is what I got:
- iPhone apps on iPod Touch. I got this one, but need to pay $20. Would rather have had it as a free upgrade, but fine, I’ll pay the $20. I will, however, wait until the 3rd party apps are available. I already have the apps on my touch (thanks to the great community out there) and would get it “officially” except I don’t want to give up the NetFlix 3rd party app. It is the way I manage my queue these days.
- Video Playlist. Still waiting for the Apple TV “take two” update to see if this made it. And as I just said, I’m not upgrading to the latest touch firmware for a little longer. I’m still hopeful.
- Microphone for iPod Touch. There is a “do it yourself” hack out there. Perhaps this will come as an accessory once 3rd party apps arrive later this year.
- Small laptop. The Macbook Air arrived. Reviews are great if you like the tradeoffs made, and terrible if you don’t. I would get one, but have hesitation around the HD. I want the SSD, but the premium for that is too much. Maybe I wait 8 months and the price drops by $500 (which I expect it will for the SSD equiped one). The performance will be fine for me. It is basically the same machine I use everyday (my Mac Mini has 2GB of RAM and a 1.6GHz Duo).
All in all, I got enough to be happy. Now I just need to find a few more coins to splurge on the Air.