Photo 365 Project - Pizza Oven

A coworker decided to build a dry-fit pizza oven. Dry-fit means it isn't permanent, just a proof-of-concept that will be used for about a year then replaced with a more durable design. In the meantime, pizza, pastries, breads and perhaps roasts will get their turn inside the wood fired oven.

Photo 365 Project - Road Stripping

The long running joke here (and probably everywhere else with similar climate) is "We have two seasons, winter and road construction".

I snapped this after grabbing coffee on the way to work. I'm amazed at how quickly these machines can strip an asphalt road. The ground up bits are taken to a local company called Bituminous Roadways where the asphalt is recycled into new asphalt.

Photo 365 Project - Something Wicked This Way Came

It's tornado season in the Midwest, but usually they don't all come at once. Before today, the most tornadoes confirmed in Minnesota in a single day was 26, that was in 1992. Normally, there are less than that in an entire year. On this day, that record is expected to be broken as dozens of tornadoes sprouted from a line of storms that raced from southwest Minnesota and off to the northeast and into Wisconsin.

It was getting late in the day and the sun had been hidden behind clouds since about 4 in the afternoon. It was storm building weather with a cool morning, lots of heat building during the day (what we call 'adding energy' to the atmosphere). If the sun gets down soon enough this stuff will dissipate, but these are the longest days of the year in this part of the country with over 15 hours of sunlight. There were storm warnings with dire predictions of hail and wicked weather so I ran some quick errands then tucked my car in the garage and waited for the drama. After much wind and gloominess, the light outside turned a very green (seriously, when the sunlight turns green nothing good comes from it) an hour later it shifted to an odd yellow color. I grabbed the camera and went out hoping to capture the odd color. Epic fail, the camera seems to have 'corrected' the color.

This storm continued to the northwest through the Twin Cities and ended up killing three people. An older couple fled their farmhouse and hunkered down in a ditch, only to get hit by some debris; the elderly gentleman was wounded and his wife was killed. In northwestern Minnesota a 58 year old man (on his birthday none-the-less) checked in at the convenience store where his daughter was working; he also worked there but was off that evening. A tornado whipped into town and the man covered his daughter as they ducked into the corner and the tornado hit the store. He was killed but his daughter survived. Also in north western Minnesota a woman was killed, details are sketchy as places hardest hit are cleaning up.

Photo 365 Project - Planted Field

This field has been left fallow for the last couple years. This year some cars showed up and people stood around looking very serious for a while. Later the field was plowed. Then more cars showed up. Then plants started to grow.

They've done a very good job creating these little plots of various plants. The current theory is the field workers leased the field and plan to sell the produce at a farmer's market later in the year.

Photo 365 Project - Kindle

This is what happens when you forget to take a picture of the day. I was lying in bed reading a book, dozing off, when it occurred to me I had no photo! I berrated myself for a while, considered taking a picture of the ceiling of my bedroom, then decided the kindle in front of me was a better candidate. I spend a fair amount of time looking at this kindle, might as well memorialize it in a photo.

Photo 365 Project - Gas Pump

A little pic for our friends overseas. A truely american gas pump. Note the color television at the top (it starts a little newscast, weather report, and advertisement when the pump is activated), the digital display and pay-at-the-pump card slot (these particular pumps are open 24 hours, the gas station/convenience store closes, but people can still drive up and buy gas).

Not very photo worthy? Consider the oddity of it. Gas stations claim they make very little money on gas, the real profit is in the store. The gas is a "loss leader" that gets people to the store. Yet the gas stations provide these monoliths and make it very easy to bypass the store.

Photo 365 Project - Mushroom Lawn

Along with many days of rain comes mushrooms. These little guys pop up fast and in quantity. Fresh ones appear daily as the rain continues, and often in clumps like this.

Photo 365 Project - Bike Wash

It's been raining for several days here. When a break appeared and some errands needed to be done, I took my bike for a wash, I mean ride. Minutes after I got home (and snapped this picture for the Photo 365 project) the light rain turned into a down pour.

Photo 365 Project - Ditto Face

Wanna get your camera licked? Stick it in the face of a black lab. They'll eat (or at least tongue swipe) anything. Note: Dog slime is not a cleaning fluid, quite the opposite.

Photo 365 Project - Half Tree

Walking the dog in my neighboorhood I'm always struck by this sight. It's like the roadway has projected itself up and sliced off half of the tree. Everywhere else in the neighborhood the trees flow over the roadway, so odd tree-consider yourself photographed!

Photo 365 Project - Wednesday Comics

I didn't become aware of the concept of "Wednesday Comics" until last year, so I suspect it is worth a couple words worth of description.

On Wednesday's, new comics are put up for sale at comic book retailers across the country. As a matter of fact, last year a limited series called 'Wednesday Comics' was produced, the title acknowledging this weekly phenomena. At about the same time, my wife and I started taking Wednesday nights as a time to go out on 'date night'. The two became linked for a while and we made a regular run to the local comic book store.

We're not huge comic book collectors, but the people and atmosphere appeal to our casual taste. Wednesday trips to the comics store have since become a less regular stop for us, but this week we went and I thought I'd take a snapshot of the day.

Photo 365 Project - Ditto's Window Shopping

I planned better than the previous day for this picture. The idea was to take Ditto to the pet store with me to do some shopping for cat litter and food. While there I'd get a picture of the dog picking out cat food or litter. I had a nagging thought "how exactly am I going to frame a photo with a dog in the picture, while holding said dog's leash AND a camera, AND somehow capture the fact that this dog is in a store?"

Details be damned, just taking the dog shopping for cat supplies had enough going for it to make this plan worth executing.

The attempts at pictures with the dog sniffing at the cat litter, "making her selection" didn't turn out very well. The cat food was on too high of a shelf for the dog to really get involved (yes, there was other cat food on a low shelf, but there has to be some integrity in these photos and this one was already slipping into 'staged' territory).

Finally, the birds caught my eye. To be honest, and in the interest of full disclosure, Ditto didn't really care about the birds. She's not much of a shopper either, she was actually eying the exit as this photo was snapped.

Photo 365 Project - Sunset Clouds

The light of another day almost slipped away without getting captured on camera. This required a quick run out to the deck and a snapshot with a Nikon 3000s, something capable of dealing with the low light better than the iPhone that has taken most of the Photo 365 project pictures you see on this blog. That also introduced an unexpected delay in posting.

With the iPhone I can e-mail the photos to wherever I need them then post the pictures here. With the Nikon I have to find the sync cable, connect the camera to a computer, and upload the pictures. The sync cable was an issue in this case; I had tucked it away in a non-standard place, resulting in the aforementioned 'delay' as I hunted for it.

Problem solved, cable found, picture posted.

Photo 365 Project - Grand Old Day

Each year on the first Sunday in June, A long section of Grand Avenue in St. Paul is blocked off, vendors set up food, drink, and random merchandise carts, and a few thousand people wander up and down the road. After a cold winter, this is serious entertainment.

Photo 365 Project - Calypso Drink

The sunlight was fading and I realized I hadn't taken a picture for the day yet. So this is what a lack of prior planning will get you. This drink caught my eye in the cooler at the gas station when I stopped for some cash (yes, I went to a gas station and didn't buy gas; I got a crazy looking drink and some money instead).

Photo 365 Project - BuzzTime Trivia

A trip to Buffalo Wild Wings yielded today's picture of the day. Again, not exactly expert photography, just a snapshot to show something that I saw or did that day.

Photo 365 Project - Ditto in the Yard

Ah, summer. And lawn mowing. Ditto seems to approve of the cut grass, it seems to make it easier for her to pick up tennis balls. She's an 85 pound 3 year old black lab, mixed with an unknown donor.

Ditto came to us from an animal rescue organization. She and her siblings, along with her mom, had been dumped in a ditch; we were told they were found when the puppies were about four days old. How do they know how old she was you ask? I did too. It seems puppies senses develop at a pretty consistent rate, and based on their development the vet hazard a guess at a number less than a week old. Puppies are born without a sense of smell, sight, or hearing (they do have a sense of touch and taste, smell and vision coming in at about 2 weeks for many breeds). Since she was 'rescued' before those other senses developed, we like to think she avoided detecting the oddness associated with such a rough entry into the world.

Regardless, we thought we could do better than a ditch, and gave her a home. Now she lives the sissified suburban life, with a (nicely mowed) lawn to play in and family to amuse her.

Photo 365 Project - Diffley Road

After the previous day's near failure to grab a picture and then resorting to a picture of grout work, I figured I'd take an "emergency backup picture" early in the day. The rest of the day came and went and the backup picture has been pressed into service. This was taken on my commute to work. Rather than the usual highway views found on a city commute, this section is rolling hills and a nice view with everything green. I've biked up and down these hills, not nearly as serene as cruising through in a car while sipping a mocha.

Photo 365 Project - Grout Repair

I almost went the whole day without taking a picture. I had spent the day at work and the evening at home scraping grout for a 'quick' repair job at the house. Not very photogenic stuff, but that's life. Some days the pictures are pretty plain when doing the routine things that keep a household going.

Photo 365 Project - Memorial Day

It's memorial day in the United States. This picture was taken at Fort Snelling National Cemetery, located in the Twin Cities. The cemetery is over 436 acres of land and has over 172,000 internments.

Photo 365 Project - Rainbow over Minneapolis

My first visit to the new Twin's ballpark in Minneapolis, and the first inning started with a light rain. The rain cleared quickly, never slowing the game down, and this rainbow appeared over the city. Welcome back to outdoor baseball in Minneapolis!

Photo 365 Project - Bonfire

Another nice night, a Saturday on Memorial Day weekend. This time we wrapped up the evening by burning things. A nice fire as the sunset and the day was complete.

Photo 365 Project - Down the Stretch

A nice evening for a visit to the races at Caterbury Downs. It is Canterbury's 25th year, I remember going when the place first opened. With the 25 year celebration, entrance is free- making for a pleasant evening watching the horses walk in the paddock then tearing down the track.

Photo 365 Project - Cat in Rail

She's not stuck, really. Apparently she just wanted to see what was "down there", below the railing.

Photo 365 Project - Door Handles

My wife and I had a date night and went to a familiar spot. Fans will recognize the door handles of this restaurant/bar chain, found across the United States.

Photo 365 Project - Cliff Road (Ordinary) Traffic

Working at my company's office, I commute along a very straight and occasionally backed up road. I snapped this picture waiting at a stoplight in one of the more jam-prone sections of road. It's significance? Nothing out of the ordinary. Of course, 20 years from now the ordinary may seem extra-ordinary. I know whenever I come back from a vacation trip and think back to what I saw, it doesn't ever seem to be the stuff I actually took pictures of. It is the ordinary stuff that pops into mind.

Photo 365 Project - Car Mirror

You may have heard of a concept that involves taking a photo once a day for a year. Here's an attempt. Some things come to mind that might help the success of this little project:

• Keep it simple. The photos are snapshots of a moment in time during the day. No hunting out the perfect picture.
• Keep the description simple. I don't want to catch myself saying "I'll post the photo later, when I have inspiration for writing the description"
• Easy accountability. I'm kind of complicating that by posting the pictures to Blogger, that's just another step (I could, and have to this point, just e-mail the pictures to myself).

The kickoff picture is a self portrait, of my index finger. In the mirror. Of my car. Showing the temp. It was actually taken with the intent of posting to facebook to get people in cold places to say 'wow'. Now it has another, more manageable purpose. Being the 365 Photo of the Day.

Robotics Team Structure

Getting Close to Robo-Time...

Robot Shipped, one last pic

This was taken well before the robot shipped but I didn't get around to uploading it. It's one of my favorites, so I thought I post it anyway. It shows the chain drive that powers the shooting column. As the moon rocks travel up the shooting chamber, each roller it encounters is moving faster than the previous set, thanks to the gearing shown here. With the creative routing of the chains, a single motor is able to power both sides of the rollers (one rolling counter-clockwise, the other clockwise).

Winter Driving Season Almost Over...Please?

I'm about done with this. And this photo was from the previous snowstorm. Since that one, we've had another that arrived at the perfect time to scramble traffic.

Robot Construction Update, Integration Test

The robot subsystems are getting close to being integrated. As a visualization exercise, we stacked the parts close to where they will be on the finished bot.

Starting from the bottom, the drive train assembly (this was taken a bit ago but provides a good "baseline")


Next comes the electronics board "drawer". This was originally conceived to be a slide out drawer for easy access, but has since been redesigned with doors around the robot allowing access to reach in to the components rather than sliding the drawer out.


Next comes the Collector. This subsystem picks 'moon rocks' up from the floor and lifts them into a storage area. The rollers seen here will be underneath a band of material the 'moon rocks' (Orbit Balls) cling to.


Finally, the shooter. Still mounted in the plywood prototype, the shooter is a geared assembly, with each roller increasing speed, propelling the 'moon rocks' out of the top. Not shown is the hood and turret assembly, controlled by a camera to target the direction the moon rocks are thrown.

Robotics Drive Test

Just a quick note on robot construction.

The team hosted a programming workshop for 5 other teams. 4 hours of coding hands-on and idea sharing followed by tours of the construction process; everyone seemed to have a good time.

Build on the robot's test frame wrapped up with a quick drive test. The programmers were testing out several different acceleration algorithms to cope with the slippery surface the 'bot will see in competition.

Robo Prep Continues...

Preparation for the FIRST robotics build season continues. A test board has been assembled and refined. Tomorrow the game will be announced, then the plotting, planning, designing, constructing and revising will begin.

For now, this is how the test board looks. The actual robot is not expected to look anything like what is seen here, this is just a test platform.

Robotics Update

On a totally different note, the robotics team is transitioning to C++ this year from straight C. The communications system between the robot and driver control station is 802.11n. Each robot forms an on-board network between its controller (cRIO from National Instruments), camera (etherlink connected), and uses a game controller to talk back to the hub (Linksys/Cisco 802.11n wireless router). The router sits back at the "driver station" so it has access to line power to drive the router. Two USB joysticks (logitec) provide operator control.

I beg to differ

I had a backlog of InformationWeek newsletters to browse and had a slow moment so I dove in. Here is what popped up:

Google's upcoming Android mobile platform could spur consumers to widely adopt smartphones, according to new research from ABI Research.

The report, titled "Smartphone And OS Markets," said Google's platform could push smartphones toward standardization, which could eventually push smartphone adoption beyond the 14% market share it currently holds.

Maybe that is an idea that can only be accepted as true if the reverse is also true. The reverse would be that the lack of standardization has impeded adoption. I'm not buying it. Standardization in this context is referencing the operating system of the phones. We (referring to people of the planet Earth) have several operating system choices for phones; Symbian, Windows Mobile, Palm, Blackberry, Apple, and Android (probably others too, but you get the idea). The research seems to imply that if we could only have one more people would buy them.

When has that ever worked?

Neglected for NaNoWriMo

This blog is being neglected due to National Novel Writing Month. The normal level of neglect will resume after the month of November.

In the meantime, please enjoy this image of the Pages icon from Apple. I don't have a Mac at the moment (actually, I have a Mac Plus in the closet but even I don't think that counts), but tell myself that if I did it'd be easier to write a novel.

An unneeded photo, thankfully

I've been saving this picture for a while, waiting for an incident to write about that would match the photo. Thankfully, none have. So I gratefully dump the photo now and move on.

Hitchhikers Guide to make a Fowl stop?

Children's author Eoin Colfer has been commissioned to write a sixth instalment of the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy series.

Mostly Harmless, the last Hitchhiker book, was written by its creator, the late Douglas Adams, 16 years ago.

Now Adams's widow, Jane Belson, has given her approval to bring back the hapless Arthur Dent in a new book entitled And Another Thing...

Eoin Colfer, 43, is best known for the best-selling Artemis Fowl novels.

More at: BBC News

Fairwell to the Great Minnesota Get Together

With summer winding down and the days getting shorter I thought I'd jot something about the traditional 'end of summer' trip for us to the Great Minnesota Get Together. It's a big crush of humanity, all wandering around eating things we don't need to eat, buying things we don't need to buy and drinking things to survive the end of summer heat, and mostly just people watching.

With the fair's status as a swan song for summer, I thought this picture I caught as we headed home pretty much said the rest.

Live Update - Right Now.

Wow, Windows LiveMail apparently updated while I was reading a message, causing this notice to appear. What are the odds that they'd push an update in the middle of the afternoon? Isn't that something that should be done off-peak?

BTW, no - the update did not change the "We only spell check the first 2,000 characters" issue.

=====

ETA (November, 2008). Hotmail has done another update. This time the 2,000 character spell check limit has been removed. Good on you, HotMail, LiveMail, Microsoft, or whatever you're calling yourself these days! Nice job.

What Makes a Good Blog

I added a new post over at Where's Adam's iPod, it has been a while. Merlin Mann from 43Folders.com (and various other endevors) wrote about what makes a good blog. I applied his thoughts to Where's Adam's iPod and rated the site (no surprise- it scored low).

Regardless, I thought Mr. Mann's points were good, and worth repeating:

1. Good blogs have a voice
    
2. Good blogs reflect focused obsessions. People start real blogs because they think about something a lot. Maybe even five things.
    
3. Good blogs are the product of “Attention times Interest.” A blog shows me where someone’s attention tends to go...There’s a story here.
    
4. Good blog posts are made of paragraphs. Blog posts are written, not defecated.
    
5. Good “non-post” blogs have style and curation. Some of the best blogs use unusual formats, employ only photos and video, or utilize the list format to artistic effect.
    
6. Good blogs are weird. Blogs make fart noises and occasionally vex readers with the degree to which the blogger’s obsession will inevitably diverge from the reader’s.
    
7. Good blogs make you want to start your own blog.
    
8. Good blogs try...A good blog is written by a blogger who thinks longer, works harder, and obsesses more. Ultimately, a good blogger tries. That’s why “good” is getting rare.
    
9. Good blogs know when to break their own rules.
    

Spell Check Limit? Please...

I really don't get it. I've used web based e-mail from Yahoo, GMail, Comcast, even Netscape back in the day. Why oh why does Hotmail (aka Windows Live Mail) have a 2,000 character spell checking limit?

Advocacy for Good Enough

"Rest satisfied with doing well, and leave others to talk of you as they please."
-- Pythagoras

Minnesota Summer

After work on a summer day.

Debugging Quote

Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place.
Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are,
by definition, not smart enough to debug it.
-- Brian W. Kernighan

Ambitious, for what...

"To the ambitious, for whom neither the bounty of life nor the beauty of the world suffice to content, it somes as penance that life for them is squandered; that they possess neither the benefits nor beauty of the world, and if they are unable to perceive what is divine in nature, which is all around them, how will they be able to see their own divinity, which is sometimes hidden?"

-Leonardo da Vinci

Defining the Vatican

The Vatican at Large: Mysterious, secret, even slightly paranoid, but at its heart, a place of simple beauty & piety.

- Me.

What makes a good committee

"To get something done, a committee should consist of no more than three men, two of whom are absent."

-- Robert Copeland

Separated at Birth?

I don't do the celebrity gossip thing, but this is some eye-catching stuff.

Caption: Christina Richie has a twin.

Where resistance comes from

When wrongs are pressed because it is believed they will be borne, resistance becomes morality.

-Thomas Jefferson M. deStael, 1807.

Monkey Business

There's this whole "Monkey on your desk" concept going around and I'm not sure I'm on board with it. The concept is to not let anyone leave a monkey on your desk. The translation is that if someone comes to you with a problem make sure they leave with it.

The undertone is that this applies when people shouldn't be shifting their problem to someone else. Sometimes the monkey really belongs to another person, and the situation is probably more of a case of "I'm returning your monkey, you left it down the hall". The think I'm not pleased about is the temptation I see for people to ignore the undertone, and just go with a "No Monkey Parking" philosophy. I can actually see it now, little signs that have a silhouette of a monkey with a red circle and slash through it.

Maybe I'm just jealous. The chant is a simple to remember (and appealing to enforce), but in my current assignment I'm pretty much a monkey nanny. I can't just tell people to take care of their own damn monkey when I'm being paid to clean up monkey poo. So while those around me act like primate-haters, I'm knee deep in…well, you get the picture.

Universal Goals

Having a goal is described as a good way to get motivated and stay on target. In thinking about goals, I came across a quote from the white House press secretary describing the President's message to the Pope during his visit to America. This 'goal' is interesting in that it is simply the President echoing the Pope's goal-- the pope says "X", the president says "America needs to hear X".

So X marks the spot, and this X seems like a universal one a lot of people could adopt:

"He will hear from the president that America and the world need to hear his message that God is love, that human life is sacred, that we all must be guided by common moral law, and that we have responsibilities to care for our brothers and sisters in need, at home and across the world," said White House press secretary Dana Perino.

When things go really wrong

"The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong, it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair." -- Douglas Adams

Not an Opera Fan, but this might be worth investigating...

From MSN (yeah, I know, what ever...)

Illnesses Cause 2 More Debuts at Met

March 23, 2008, 4:57 PM EST

At this rate, the surgeon general could issue a warning that singing at the Metropolitan Opera can be hazardous to one's health.

Illnesses have knocked out stars at dizzying speed, with six singers making unscheduled debuts in leading roles over 13 days.

Three tenors appeared as Tristan, one of whom stopped the show when a set malfunction sent him tumbling into the prompter's box. A soprano took over Isolde in mid-performance, and two other sopranos were thrust into Verdi operas on short notice.

Some singers spend years waiting a chance to sing on the Met's stage, working their way up at regional theaters with the hope they can become the next Luciano Pavarotti or Birgit Nilsson. Various viruses have catapulted those waiting in the wings into the spotlight, usually with not even a single stage rehearsal.

Angela Meade, a 30-year-old soprano still in vocal school, hadn't sung a single professional performance before her debut Friday night as Elvira in Verdi's "Ernani."

A little more than 16 hours later, tenor Robert Dean Smith sang Tristan in a performance simulcast to theaters worldwide. He jetted in from Berlin on Thursday, had a few piano rehearsals Friday and planned to head back to Europe on Sunday. Even Met General Manager Peter Gelb joked that the revival of Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde" was "cursed."

More at MSN Entertainment, probably Topix.net too.

Quit Procrastinating

While procrastinating doing some MBA research, I decided to quit procrastinating copying the pictures from last week's robotics competition in Milwaukee. Most of the photos were blah, but this one seemed to sum things up nicely. It is an action photo showing the Eagan Blue Twilight (Team 2220) Robot reaching for a ball on the overpass (blue robot to the right in the photo, arm extended upward) while the Edina Green Machine takes a dive backwards. The Green Machine ended up disabled and laying on the ground, but the team made repairs and the robot recovered nicely in later matches at the competition.

Naked City writer Malvin Wald Dies

Original Line: There are 8 million stories in the naked city. This has been one of them.

Updated to 2008: There are 8 million blogs on the Internet. This has been one of them.

Malvin Wald dies

Six Word Stories

A book of thousands of six word stories has been published. The book's title, "Not Quite What I Was Planning" (by Larry Smith and Rachel Fershleiser) is an example of the kind of stories in the book. Some others...

"For Sale: Baby shoes, never worn"

"Bring it to a boil. Often" - Mario Batali

"Revenge is living well. Without you" - Joyce Carol Oates

"Wasn't born a readhead; fixed that." - Andie Grace

- From the Kindle Daily Post, Feb 13, 2008

From the editor of the newsletter:
One Life. Six Words. What's Yours - Molly

On Economic Forecasting

"The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable." -- John Kenneth Galbraith

It's time for Carnival- Winter Style

Look up the Winter Carinival in Wikipedia and you will find:

In 1885 a New York reporter wrote that Saint Paul was "another Siberia, unfit for human habitation" in winter. Offended by this attack on their Capital City, the Saint Paul Chamber of Commerce decided to not only prove that Saint Paul was habitable but that its citizens were very much alive during winter, the most dominant season. Thus was born the Saint Paul Winter Carnival.

It's still pretty cold out there, but the sprit seems right and the storyline, with the winter king boreas being banished by Vulcan, thus allowing summer to come is pretty fun.

(fyi, the photo credit for the ice sculpture goes to Gregg at Metro Blogging)

Charlie Rose on Why Bloggers Blog

In an interview with Jeff Bezos (founder and ceo of amazon.com), Charlie Rose mentioned a quote he (Mr. Rose) has apparently said several times on his show:

How do I know what I think until I see what I've written.

This could be the Blogger Mantra.

Capital Bunnies

There are (apparently) several photos on the Internet of "Capital Bunnies" (Rabbits in the Washington D.C. area). Here's an example that caught my eye.

Neglected Blogger

Blogger has been neglected. All my recent posting has been going to Word Press (WheresAdamsIPod.com), LiveJournal, or Twitter. A good new years resolution for me would be to figure out exactly how best to use this blogger space.

GMail / GChat Adds AIM Interaction

The lines in the sand appear to have been drawn.

Yahoo Mail has a Yahoo Messenger interface through Yahoo web mail .
GMail has a GChat interface through GMail's web interface.

Yahoo Chat can cross communicate with Windows Messenger
GChat can now cross communicate with AOL Instant Messenger (AIM)

That leaves Hotmail/Windows Live Mail as the only remaining mail program without an integrated web based chat system.

Windows XP SP 3 = XP + some Vista?

Windows XP SP3 To Include Vista Elements


Portions from:
Paul McDougall, InformationWeek, quoting research done by NeoSmart.

An update to the Microsoft Windows XP operating system will include patches that add pieces of Windows Vista.

"Contrary to popular belief, Windows XP SP3 does ship with all-new features, not just patches and hotfixes," said researchers at NeoSmart, a nonprofit group that tracks computer technology. Most of the new features are "backported from Windows Vista," according to NeoSmart.

Some Features NeoSmart says are crossing over include:
- The Product Activation Model, "meaning that product keys don't need to be entered during setup. The feature should prove popular with corporate IT managers, who often need to oversee hundreds, or even thousands, of operating system installations".

- Vista's Network Access Protection modules. The system verifies a computer's health before allowing it access to a network, and has been "one of the more well-received features in Windows Vista," according to NeoSmart.

- The Microsoft Kernel Mode Cryptographic Module, which is meant to "provide easy access to multiple cryptographic algorithms," NeoSmart reports.

Information Week says Windows XP SP3 is set to debut early next year. Microsoft has reportedly widened the beta test program to include members of its MSDN and TechNet program.

McDougall said in InfoWeek, "Microsoft is in a bit of a Catch-22 with XP. The more it strengthens the OS, the less reason users have to upgrade to the newer Windows Vista."

Hard Question or Conversation Starter

Over on Live Journal they have a feature to inspire writing. The profile page that appears after logging in includes a note on the page called "What do you have to say?" with an open ended question or topic. The question that appeared recently was:

What makes you unique?

The first time I saw this I blew it off with a shrug and thought "who says everyone is unique?".

I have a theory that challenging questions that contain both the word 'you' and either 'who, what, why, when, where' tend to have a bit of a negative undertone. In this case the implication is that the person is supposed to defend that they are in fact unique. An alternative response is to attack the question as flawed, that was my first response.

Then I thought about conversation starters. Different settings have different thresholds of acceptablility. Imagine you are at a family Christmas party, shouting this question at your cousin across the dinner table probably isn't going to get a response. Maybe you'd get a response if you were having a little side conversation, just one or two other people. The question would almost certainly get a response as pillow talk. The more personal the setting the more likely the question will be recieved as a geniuine interested inquiry rather than as a challenge.

The question works well as a blog entry starter because the writing of a blog entry can be a very personal setting. The responses might be slanted based on the topic of the blog or the audience the blog is appealing to. This blog has (a) no topic and (b) appeals to an indeterminante demographic (aka whoever stumbles across it, and 'appeals' is almost certainly the wrong word in that case). It also works well on Live Journal because the entries tend to be, well, journals- not blogs.

The distinction between the two is a topic for another post.

Windmills

While road tripping across Iowa we came across a couple windmill farms. They just look cool.

Holloween

Holloween came and went without much excitement. Far too busy doing other things this year, next year the hollowed eve should get more attention. Take this picture for example. I walk by this yard often while walking the dog and didn't even notice the poor witch that apparently had miscalculated her approach. These are the kind of things a person should notice. If they go unnoticed, I think that is an indicator you are far too busy.

Free Education from Pricey Colleges, Part 2

A while ago I wrote about MIT offering free access to curriculum.

Now I've found that UC Berkley is offering free pod casts of some of their lectures and guest speakers on campus.

Bedtime stories or interesting stuff? Dunno. You be the judge.
http://webcast.berkeley.edu/

Vatican paper set to clear Knights Templar

Vatican paper set to clear Knights Templar
By Malcolm Moore in Rome
Last Updated: 2:08am BST 05/10/2007 (October 5th)

The mysteries of the Order of the Knights Templar could soon be laid bare after the Vatican announced the release of a crucial document which has not been seen for almost 700 years

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/10/05/wvatican105.xml

Just a tag line, bragging, or an excuse?

Mitch Wagner over at InfoWeek had an interesting editorial about people who include "Sent from my {mobile phone or iPhone or Blackberry}" in their e-mail messages. I know of a few people who do this because they want to offer an appology for short (blunt?) replies. I also know of a couple people who do this because it was the default when they got their phone (nice marketing, Blackberry).

In the editorial, Mitch quotes liberally from a Slate story that suggests the 'Sent from my Blackberry' tag line either acts as "...a subtle signal to my correspondents that I'm getting a lot done" or "...gives the impression that you're on the move but still chained to work". The Slate author (Paul Boutin) seems to have a double standard, suggesting that when these tag lines mention an iPhone instead of a blackberry they "...conjure an image of a doofus who wants you to know he has an iPhone".

Mitch then goes on to raise a more interesting point, suggesting that regardless of the type of phone involved these tag lines are "...symptomatic of a workplace culture that places more emphasis on effort than results."

Ouch. But maybe he is on to something...

Writer's Block...unblocked.

One of the cool features of Live Journal is a little promotion going on called the "Writer's Block". It is sponsored by HP, and appears as a question on each Live Journal user's home page (sort of like the Dashboard on Blogger, but with more options reflecting the variety of social networking tools within Live Journal).

These "Writer's Blocks" are simple questions that encourage a response, for example:
- What's been your biggest influence in making you a better writer?
- What's the best advice you've given or gotten for taking good photos?
- If you could travel back in time to spend a day with someone, who would it be and why?

Each statement is presented individually, with navigation buttons to move through the question. There is also an "Answer" button, clicking it lauches the editor with the question filled in and ready to take your response. The entry is also automatically tagged and, presumably, writing a response enters the author in a contest for HP stuff.

Blog in search of a topic

I've come to the conclusion that all great blogs have a topic, a unifying theme that ties the entries together and establishes an expectation amongst the readers of the blog. This blog is lacking in that category. The unifying theme? Things that I was thinking about when the post was written. Sure, that is technically a theme, but not very good for establishing an expectation amongst readers.

With that shortcoming in this blog in mind, I've launched an eight month initiative to identify a topic. Why eight months? Because I've got another long-term project I'm currently working on that should wrap up in eight months. In the meantime, I'm planning on trying out various blog topics. Today's topic: State Constitutions and their relationship to the US Federal Constitution. Yep, sounds nuts. In other words, 'and now for something completely different'. Speaking of other words, here's a quote:

"An important distinction exists between the federal and state constitutions. The U.S. Constitution contains grants of authority from the states to the federal government. All powers not specified in the federal constitution are retained by the states. This means that the U.S. Constitution identifies what the federal government can do, but the state constitutions tell the state governments what they cannot do."

- Reed, Shedd, Morehead, & Corley, 2005, The legal and regulatory environment of business

Survival Notes

Doing some research on Survival stuff I cam upon SurvivorMan (a Discovery Channel series). In browsing through the related websites I came upon the following notes, but didn't have anyplace to store them, so I put them here for future reference.

www.lesstroudonline.com
The Psychology of Wilderness Survival, Gino F. Ferri
Wilderness Living and Primitive Skills, John and Geri McPherson
Bushcraft, Mors Kochanski
Outdoor Survival Skills, Larry Dean Olsen
The Art of Survival, Cord Christian, Troebst (out of print)
Any of the Peterson Field Guides (wild edibles, etc.)

Les first started by taking every and any survival course he could find, including at Humber College in Ontario and Prairie Wolf in Kansas.

Mobile Blogging

It's been a while since i tried mobile blogging.

----

That was sent from my phone. Apparently it had been too long since I tried mobile blogging, because blogger sent me anther new blog name and claim token. The random blog name (sawfob327) was no where near as good as my previous randomly generated blog name (elfbug266), so I didn't hesitate in merging it with this blog.

Anyway, mobile blogging is alive and well. A bit like twitter, but without the social networking hooks.

You know you are getting too much press when...

…some of the source code for your homepage is leaked and, well, anyone cares.


Facebook Source Code Leak Raises Security Questions
Examining the leaked code reveals vulnerabilities in Facebook's applications that could be exploited, a developer said.

By K.C. Jones
InformationWeek
August 14, 2007 02:25 PM


Facebook source code has been leaked on the Web, and that's raising some serious issues about the site's security and data privacy.
Source code from the social networking site's main index page appeared on a blog called Facebook Secrets recently and remained there Tuesday. The blog does not contain any other postings.

"A small fraction of the code that displays Facebook Web pages was exposed to a small number of users due to a single misconfigured Web server that was fixed immediately," a Facebook spokesperson said Tuesday. "It was not a security breach and did not compromise user data in any way."

Still, developer Nik Cubrilovic wrote in a TechCrunch blog posting that the leaked code could reveal vulnerabilities in Facebook's applications that could be exploited.

"From just this single page of source code, a lot can be said and extrapolated about the rest of the Facebook application and platform," he said. "At a quick glance, I know that I can see some obvious things in the code that both reveal certain hidden aspects of the platform and give a potential attacker a good head start."

{snip}
More at:
http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=201800144&cid=nl_IWK_daily

(FYI, I found a copy of the leaked code and, yawn, it is about as intriguing as the aforementioned article).

From the 'Who Knew' Department...

On Cherubs...

A cherub is a mighty angel. One of the functions of the cherubim was to serve as guardians. These angels guarded the entrances to both the tree of life (Gen 3:24) and the Most Holy Place (Exod. 26:31-33). Two cherubim of hammered gold were part of the ark of the covenant (Exod. 25:18-22). The living creatures carrying God's throne in Ezekiel 1 may have been cherubim.(from Wikipedia).

And I thought they were just cute cubby little angels. I guess you don't want to get on the wrong side of one of those.

About the 35W Bridge...

The big news this week was the 35W bridge collapse in Minneapolis. This has been world news, a fact that is supported by me living in the same metro area as said bridge but able to read about it on the Sydney (Austrailia) Morning Hearld newspaper's website. Why read about it there? Just to confirm to myself that it wasn't myopia-- I'm right here, of course it is news and I can relate and sense the importance. But was it really a big deal to other people? The answer has been given over the last few days, a resounding YES.

This is a Big Deal, but what does that mean? It is big in a physical sense, big in the time to fix sense, and big in the human lives were lost sense. Yet I don't know what to write about it.

The physical scale is hard to describe with words in a worthy way. You can look it up in newspaper archives today and find phrases like 67 feet above the water, a couple thousand feet long, sixty cars, an unknown number of missing people. All just words that fail to convey the sheer Big-ness of this Deal.

The time to fix enormity is hard to write about because no one knows. 2-3 years is a long time in a culture raised on 30 minute sitcoms and 30 second sound bites.

It is hard to write about the human lives that were lost because I didn't know them but I think they deserve a better description than some stranger (me) could string together with a few words.

So maybe I've said enough. Maybe if I'm right, that this is a Big deal that anyone could relate to, then you already have and nothing else needs to be said.

(note: the photo is from the Minneapolis Star Tribune).

Blogging from Live Mail - Evolutionary, Not Revolutionary

I just got done noodling with the Microsoft Mail Live Beta's integration with Spaces.live.com. The new 'outlook express replacement' has an option to write a blog post (or simply blog an email) directly from the mail client. Google docs offers similar functionality so I thought I'd give that a test drive too (this post was made using Google docs).

The Live Mail (beta 12.0.1184) to Live Spaces integration had a couple quirks:

(1) The title of the blog entry is changed on publication from whatever was typed (like 'thoughts on dogs') to be prefixed with the phrase "talking about...". So the post ends up as "talking about thoughts on dogs".

(2) The body of the entry, typed within a Live Mail editor much like the e-mail editor is changed on publication to be a quoted text block.

(3) The publish to blog link simply opens the browser to the web-based Spaces blog editor with the text filled in (with the changes noted above).

Maybe nice for transferring an email to a blog entry, but that can easily be done with copy and paste. Overall first impression: evolutionary, not revolutionary. That seems to be the tag line for tech this year.

Over on the Google Docs / Blogger front, there were some quirks too.

(1) Sending a document to blogger involves clicking the "Publish" tab. The user must preconfigure their blog target. If that is not done, clicking the 'publish to blog' button activates the blog target configuration dialog/webform. But you aren't done! Finishing the dialog simply configures the settings. You have to push the same button again to send off the blog post. This is all written on the screen (sort of) so if you are into reading directions, this double-pump shouldn't be a problem.

(2) Google docs offers to use the title of the document as the blog post title, or at least implies that is what it is going to do. Google docs has a 'feature' of using the first line of text in your document as the title. If you rename your document then publish, the new document name is disregarded and your post is untitled. Wierd, hard to follow, and just plain quirky.

(3) No labels support. Labels can be applied by opening the post in the blogger editor and tagging.

Bottom Line: both of these are preliminary editing tools. Some post-posting clean-up will still be required.

I Can Has CheezBurger - Code Edition

I don't know why I find ICanHasCheezBurger.com so funny, I just do. If you can read the following code, you know what I mean. If you can't, you might want to check out the site.

From another blog...

HAII
   HAS A CHEEZBURGER ITZ 1
   IM IN YR LOOP
      VISIBLE "I has dis many: " N CHEEZBURGER
      IZ CHEEZBURGER BIGGER THAN 11 O RLY?
      YA RLY
         GTFO
      NO WAI
         UP CHEEZBURGER!!1
      KTHX
   KTHX
KTHXBYE

And the book http://icanhascheezburger.files.wordpress.com/2007/06/lolcode.jpg

Yenching Palace closes

From an article in the Washington Post in January:
Tucked between Engine Company 28 of the D.C. fire department and a 7-Eleven known for having a mural painted across its brick wall, Yenching Palace has been a Cleveland Park landmark for more than 50 years, a place where -- in its heyday, in the 1960s and 1970s -- diplomats and movie stars dined, secrets were told, international crises were mediated.
Sometime this year, if all goes as expected, the art-deco restaurant with the lopsided "Y" in its famous neon sign on Connecticut Avenue NW is going to get a makeover. It's going to become . . . a Walgreens.

Then NowPublic.com Posted this:
One of the most notable and historic restaurants in Washington, DC, Yenching Palace, will be closing for good on June 10th. Yenching Palace opened in 1955.

Yenching Palace, located on Connecticut Avenue, NW just south of Porter Street in the Cleveland Park neighborhood, is the secret location where President John F. Kennedy's negotiators met with representatives of the Soviet Union in 1962 to prevent a war during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Also at Yenching Palace, Richard Nixon's Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, discussed better relations with the Chinese. After that, Yenching Palace became a popular restaurant among the diplomatic community. Kissinger dined there regularly.
Although Yenching's culinary skills and offerings haven't kept up with newer Chinese restaurants in Washington, DC, it's still very popular among Washington residents, and has a very busy delivery service. It is a much loved family restaurant among neighbors.

Yenching still boasts about their now historic reviews: "In Washington, the China watchers, basking in new found esteem, are acknowledged experts in Chinese restaurants. Their honorable selection; the Yenching Palace," wrote Time Magazine in 1967.

The inside of Yenching Palace is something out of time. There are beautiful Chinese decorations all over, and even a phone booth in the restaurant's lobby. (How many full phone booths are there left?) The booths are classically spacious and comfortable. According to rumor, these booths were bugged by the FBI.

Walgreens, the drugstore chain, has purchased the space from Yenching Palace. The storefront will change; it will be made to look like it did in 1945, or at least as much as possible. Walgreens' design is based on a single photograph from 1945. The diamond windows will remain, as will the art deco glass panels. As for the neon sign that's nearly become a Washington trademark -- that may end up in a museum.

Twitterpaited - Follow vs. Friend

Twitter is new to me and some of my clan, so here's a how-to tip on "Follow" versus "Friend".

To follow someone without making them a friend you can send “follow {username}” from your phone. On twitter it is a bit more complicated.

Here’s an example: You want to follow Fred. Fred is a friend on Janet’s page. If you go to Janet’s page and click the blue “Friends” link, you will see a list of actions (twitter calls this the ‘action menu’). One of those actions is “Follow”.

So what’s the diff between friend and follow?
Friends show up on your twitter me+friends list of tweets. When you make a friend, twitter sends an email to the person you befriended to let them know you’ve declared them a friend.

Follow messages only show up on your phone or IM client, and do not show up on your own “With Others” tweet list. The person does not appear on your friends icon list, and no email is sent to the person you are following.

Sounds creepy, why follow instead of friend?
Mainly because you may not know the person very well and just want to keep up with them for a little while to get to know them. After you’ve had a chance to get to know the person you can always make them into a friend.

Who is following me?
Send the command “followers” from your phone. Twitter will respond with a follower list.

I followed and don’t like what I see, how can I stop?
Send “leave {username}” from your phone. This works for friends too- it doesn’t “unfriend” them, it just stops their tweets from going to your phone or IM. They are still listed on your friend list.

Business Cards as Art?

Business Cards as Art?

Found on the web: A website dedicated to the art of business cards. The site describes business cards as "...little tokens of identity, with their everyday and ephemeral nature but also as a keepsake - a token of remembrance".

Decide for yourself at http://dailypoetics.typepad.com/photos/business_cards_and_other_/index.html

How to fix the blog post editor's title field.

Odd...The blog editor won't let me type in the 'Title' Field. What is up with that?

The fix seems to be to click on preview. That magically heals the unresponsive title field.

A sucky blog post, but good to know.

Follow up: It seems that the title field gets randomly disabled when blogger automatically saves a draft of the post. I've only seen it happen in FireFox, but haven't done thorough testing in other browsers.