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I am saddened by the recent news that Nokia, under the leadership of former Microsoft VP Stephen Elop, has embraced Windows Phone 7 as their new flagship smartphone OS. Farewell Nokia. I hope this isn't the final nail in your coffin. This saddens me for several reasons. I have a very long history with Nokia. All of my personal cell phones have been Nokia. First was a Nokia 2190 in 1997, then a 5190 circa 1999, then a 3390 in 2001, then two North American spec 3300's in 2004 and 2007, and finally an E63 in 2009. I also own an N810 tablet which I adore, despite its age and obselescence. With the exception of the 2190, which I traded in for the 5190, I still have all of them, and with the exception of the first 3300 and excluding batteries dead from long years of storage, they all still work. The N810 still travels with me everywhere and will do so until it finally dies of exhaustion and can no longer be revived. Nokia builds robust devices, with stable operating systems. Everything I've ever gotten from them worked as designed, was designed well enough, and could take a beating. I even wrote a long review of my first Nokia 3300. I learned to use and maintain these devices as completely as I could and, with only minor pride, I was quite adept at them. I have read/watched reviews from people who come to Nokia platforms from other devices and my considered opinion after hearing their gripes about the interface are usually: "You're not using it in the optimal way." I learned the Nokia way of doing things and grew to understand and appreciate it. I had hope for Nokia, despite their fall from grace in the North American market over the last five years or so, and their "fire and forget" mentality toward phones, which honestly most phone manufacturers seem to have. I firmly believe it is largely due to them not wanting to play the North American Cell Providers' games of subsidized phones and multi-year contracts, and their conservative development style. While Apple trots out a new iPhone on an annual basis and Android development continues to steam ahead with more and more manufacturers jumping on-board, Nokia is still relying on the tried-and-true Series 60 interface on top of Symbian, with MeeGo (Formerly Maemo) for its next-gen smartphone platform. I had noticed a distinct lack of Nokia phones from the major US carriers over the last few years, and even those that had them weren't advertising it. T-mobile has the E73, but isn't promoting it at all. AT&T had the E71x, but has since all but abandoned that in favor of their iPhone, Android, and Windows Phone 7 phones (Which they later almost entirely abandoned after launch). I believe this is in large part due to Nokia not wanting to play by the Carriers' rules and trying to sell phones directly to customers and the Carriers deciding to freeze them out in favor of Asian manufacturers who would play ball (And of course Apple, which seems to have a leaver upon the very axis of the world). There were indications that Nokia was floundering. They decided to replace their CEO after years of declining market share in North America, and my secret fear when I heard their choice of replacement was that he would do something like what has transpired. Stephen Elop was head of the Office division, which is one of the bastions of the Microsoft platform and one of their strongest lock-in mechanisms. I guess it makes sense to a business-mind. Apple will not part with their control of iOS, and it will always and forever amen only run on their hardware. Android is going like gang-busters and is projected to be the next top dog in the mobile OS world. MeeGo had suffered from the same thing that Maemo suffered from, lack of drive from upper-level management and marketing. From what I have seen engineers, hackers, and geeks love it, but outside that sizable and well-funded niche, no one knows or cares about it; which I find to be a real shame. Now it has been essentially abandoned by its originator and primary developer. Intel is still holding out hope, but they almost never give up on software unless it doesn't meet their needs, which is pushing more Intel chips out the door. So that leaves Windows Phone 7, the imature reboot of the Windows Mobile platform and offspring of Zune. Of course a former Microsoft big-wig would think that is the way to go and of course Microsoft would want a big parter like Nokia to build hardware for them. As I said, Nokia makes incredible hardware, and with the binding ties to Microsoft they will be able to make WinPhone7 run well on their hardware. So it is with reluctance that I am moving my flag over to the Android camp. I have long considered this decision, and at this time Android most closely meets my needs. It is hackable, thanks entirely to a devoted community of hackers who always find ways around the manufacturers' locks; it has a sufficiently large catalog of useful software (I ignore the non-useful software for the most part); it has an open development platform so I can make my own software, and I am planning on doing just that; and there are enough device types out there that I have found the form factor that I like. I just wish it wasn't Java. I firmly believe that the major complaints about Android phones (short battery life, sluggish performance) are due to Java's (And its VM's) design decisions and even all the additional attempts at repairing those decisions aren't going to fully fix them. So farewell Nokia. I will always treasure the time we had together. Maybe in a few years, if Microsoft hasn't abused you too much and dumped your remains unceremoniously in a gutter like they have so many others, I'll look you up and see how you're doing. Maybe we will be able to be friends again, but I don't hold out much hope of that. Tags: android, geek stuff, nokia, rants
Current Mood:  sad
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Saved from here. BACON STEAK "Tastes like bacon, eats like filet mignon". Submitted by Alan Lynes What you need: Boston Butt pork steaks
Size: one inch minimum, thicker is better
Quantity: one and a half for every mouth being fed. Too much is preferred. You'll find out why. Substitutes: thick cut pork loin chops (not quite as tender) A grill or smoker One capable of smoking wood chips or pellets, and capable of keeping a steady temperature for long periods of time. A gas grill will work: a 3-burner one is best, if you use a basket for the wood under the cooking grate directly on a burner to start the wood to smolder (then turn that burner off), and you keep the burner that is under the meat "off" for indirect heat cooking. The third burner, furthest away from the meat, is your main heat source. Hickory wood chips or pellets If using a gas grill as a makeshift smoker, keep a water spray bottle handy, to control hickory flare-ups and to control the speed of wood fire smoldering. Smoldering fire is where you get smoke. Stubb's BBQ Spice Rub Procured from a few different grocery store chains like Food Lion or online at www.ILoveStubbs.com. Substitutes: There are no substitutes. You can try different BBQ dry-rubs, but they will not be the same. This WAS my little secret. Lawry's Garlic Salt Substitutes: Coarse-ground garlic salt with parsley Instructions: Smother the meat in Stubb's BBQ Spice Rub. You can be generous, it is hard to over-spice with this stuff.
Sprinkle garlic salt on the meat until you think that you may have put on just a little too much. That IS the right amount.
Preheat the grill or smoker. Get your smoke on!
Place the meat on the grill but NOT directly over a burner that is on.
Keep the spray bottle handy to keep the meat moist and control the hickory.
Add chips or pellets as needed to keep a nice heavy amount of smoke going.
If you see no smoke, the hickory is probably on fire.
Fire will spike the temperature up and burn the meat, so check obsessively for hickory fire, and monitor the oven temperature very closely.
This is the art of smoking.
Keep the grill or smoker between 180 and 250 degrees.
Water evaporates at 212 degrees, so keeping the "oven" at or near this temperature will help retain the moisture in the meat.
Slowly cook until internal temperature is around 160 degrees.
No meat thermometer? Cut into a thick section and the center will just barely be pink.
The outside will be a pretty color pink, an effect caused by the smoke. This is highly desirable.
Cooking time is 1.5 to 2 hours. Or about 7 beers, whichever comes first.
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Note to self: The Asus Eee Box is looking like a really viable set-top thin-client. It comes with DVI (HDMI on the more powerful ones), S/PDIF (And HDMI) digital audio out, Intel Atom 270 (1.6GHz), ~40w power consumption, and a VESA 75/100 mount (So it should be able to bolt onto the back of the TV). For <= 720p, Asus Eee Box 202+ Intel GMA 950, DVI and S/PDIF out. For 1080p, Asus Eee Box 204/206 ATI Radeon HD 3450, HDMI audio/video out. Need to find out about ATI video support for that card and outputs. Tags: geek stuff, networking, tv project
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Being a sysadmin, I have to take my laptop with me when I'm on call. Being a Linux user, I don't want to resort to Mac OS or Windows on a laptop to connect to my networks and do what needs doing.
Until recently, I had a Verizon "aircard" a 1xEVDO PC Card modem that worked really really well. NetworkManager saw it when it was plugged in, and it was almost DSL-fast when coverage was good. Sadly, with the current recession (Yeah, I said it), my employer has been trying to cut costs, and $60 a month for an aircard is a cost they wanted trimmed.
They didn't leave me out in the cold though. We have a USB modem that gets shuffled around to the guy who gets to hen-sit Nagios and be available 24x7. I haven't gotten that working yet, but there is another method, the company did add a data-plan to all our phones. This unlocked Dial-up Networking (DUN) which means our laptops can communicate through our phones to get on the Internet.
I had already gotten that part working with my Nokia N810 (It was trivially easy, actually), but the keyboard on the n810 drives me. It's okay for typing a few things (Better than pecking them out on a Crackberry if only a little bit) but if it's going to take more than a few minutes, I want a real keyboard (At least a laptop-sized one). I've been searching for a way to get the "tether" working from my laptop to the phone.
Today I did.
I followed primarily these two HOWTOs:
http://naraku.net/2008/08/15/how-to-teather-blackberry-and-linux-via-bluetooth/
http://pegelinux.wordpress.com/2008/06/11/blackberry-curve-8310-as-bluetooth-modem-on-ubuntu-hardy/
Both are pretty good and covered the basics to get me connected to the Internet. It's no replacement for a real networking connection. Even 802.11b is faster and has better latency, but it's good in a pinch and sometimes that's all I need. Tags: bluetooth, linux, n810, networking, tether
Current Mood:  accomplished
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Those who know me know that my favorite video game genre is RTS and my favorite RTS is Total Annihilation. Released circa 1995, TA freed players from tedious and mind-numbing micro-management. Units could be as far apart as you wanted (Previously they had to touch or be within a certain distance). Construction yards had unlimited build queues. And the sheer number of units surpassed anything available. Oh, and the game was nearly completely 3D. The units were 3D, the terrain was 3D, but the maps were just static renders, and the camera couldn't rotate and always looked nearly straight down. So here we are, 13 years later, and I've finally got The Spring Project (Formerly TA Spring) working under Linux. Spring is a game engine, originally built to be a fully 3D clone of TA. It runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux. It is capable of running a lot of different mods, up to and including entirely new games. I've been playing it the last week or so and I'm really impressed. It's still a bit rough around the edges (Some maps don't load; some maps make the engine bail as soon as the game starts; the AAI is suicidal after a while, and I haven't found any good water/metal maps yet).
So here's some information I've found on it that I want to save in one place for future reference. Link Dump
Setup Guide for Linux
Other Linux distros not listed on the above page
Linux installer
Available Spring Mods (Games)
Complete Annihilation
XTA
Balanced Annihilation Spring FilesSpring PortalDarkStars Spring FilesTags: game, linux, rts, spring, ta, total annihilation
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And finally, New Rule: Liberals must stop saying President Bush hasn't asked Americans to sacrifice for the war on terror. On the contrary, he's asked us to sacrifice something enormous. Our civil rights. Now, when I heard George Bush was reading my emails, I probably had the same reaction you did: George Bush can read?! Yes, he can. And this administration has read your phone records, credit card statements, mail, Internet logs. I can't tell if they're fighting a war on terror or producing the next season of "Cheaters." I mail myself a copy of the Constitution every morning just on the hope they'll open it and see what it says. So -so when it comes to sacrifice, don't kid yourself. You have given up a lot. You've given up faith in your government's honesty, the goodwill of people overseas, and six-tenths of the Bill of Rights. Here's what you've sacrificed: search and seizure, warrants, self-incrimination, trial by jury, cruel and unusual punishment. Here's what you have left: hand guns, religion, and they can't make you quarter a British soldier. If Prince Harry invades the Inland Empire, he has to bring a tent. You know, in previous wars on the home front made a very different kind of sacrifice. During World War II, we endured rationing, paid higher taxes, bought war bonds, and in the interest of national unity, people even pretended Bob Hope was funny. Right, like you laughed at him. Okay, women, donated their silk undergarments so they could be sewn into parachutes. Can you imagine nowadays a Britney Spears or a Lindsay Lohan going without underwear? Bad example. But, look, George Bush has never been too bright about understanding "fereigners." But he does know Americans. He asked this generation to sacrifice the things he knew we would not miss: our privacy and our morality. He let us keep the money. But he made a cynical bet that we wouldn't much care if we became a "Big Brother" country that has now tortured a lot of random people. And yet no one asks the tough questions like, "Is torture necessary?" "Who will watch the watchers?" "And when does Jack Bauer go to the bathroom?" I mean, it's been five years. Is he wearing one of those astronaut diapers? In conclusion, after 9/11, President Bush told us Osama bin Laden could run but he couldn't hide. But, then he ran and hid. So, Bush went to Plan B: pissing on the Constitution and torturing random people. Conservatives always say the great thing Reagan did was make us feel good about America again. Well, do you feel good about America now? I'll give you my answer, and to get it out of me, you don't even have to hold my head underwater and have a snarling guard dog rip my nuts off. No, I don't feel very good about that. They say evil happens when good men do nothing. Well, the Democrats prove it also happens when mediocre people do nothing. Tags: quotes
Current Mood:  depressed
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In my last entry, I laid out a bit of a teaser: the digital convergence that has been promised for the last fifteen years or so is coming true, but not because any large company is championing it; they’re too busy fighting each other, looking after their own profitability, and navigating the legal mine field of copyrights, patents, and other “IP” to deliver on such a grand vision.
For the rest of this series, I will try to avoid the legal entanglements (And my own rants) and outline the technical information I have for how to accomplish what I am ... proposing, for a lack of a better term.
In my mind, a convergent system should include the following:
- “smart” home
- “smart” car
- “smart” phone
You know what? Let’s drop the "smart". This is all "smart." That will go without saying from now on.
- Digital Recording Device(s)
- Server to coordinate everything
The Intention
You're a busy person (Who isn't?) and you want to leverage technology to make things easier on yourself. It doesn't hurt if you've got some money (Some of this stuff isn't cheap), time, and don't mind living a geek lifestyle (Some of us consider that a plus). You want to watch and listen to what you want, when and where you want; go where you want when you want; and keep track of it all for your own information. You meet people occasionally and somehow information is exchanged, you want to keep track of that too. Plus, being the busy person you are, you have lots of appointments and to-do items you have to keep track of.
The House
The house is probably the most vital part. It’s the heart, the nexus of the entire system. The house will be the one place where we’re not constrained on space, or speed. It will hold all the communications mechanisms and data that the rest of the system uses.
A king needs a castle, but that doesn’t mean he wants to keep track of everything involved in running it. I don't have the money to hire people to do all the work for me, so I turn to technology. Like a wizard’s home, the house should be able to do for itself (To the limits of current technology), leaving the wizard more time to devote to his projects. That means automation: sensors, zoning, alarm system, entertainment, and so on.
The Car
The car should be able to handle most tactical tasks, by that I mean it should be able to store and retrieve information that I may need at any given time, but it wouldn’t be doing big data crunching jobs, like transcoding audio and video. It would also be limited on space (100GB doesn't seem like much of a limit, but once you get into video files, you'd be surprised). It would be able to play audio and video, sure, and display information that I may need, like maps, routes, traffic, weather, alerts, reminders, etc. It should coordinate with the home system for its information, and it should keep itself updated.
The Phone
The "phone" would be more like a PDA than a phone. In fact, I've been vacillating between a smartphone like the HTC Wizard and a bluetooth phone and PDA like the Sharp Zaurus. The Wizard has the advantage of being a single item to carry and having integrated systems, but the PDA has the advantage of not running down the phone battery when using the PDA, and better compatibility at the present time (Zaurus comes with Linux pre-installed, while hackers are still trying to get Linux into a stable state on the Wizard).
Digital Recording Device(s)
Technically, the DRDs fall under the house category, because they are integrated with the house systems, but they're important enough to warrant their own section. These are digital devices such as Radio Shark, TiVO, SlingBox, dedicated MythTV boxes, and so on. These will be how media gets into the system (TV, Radio, satellite, DVD, CD, etc).
Server Coordination
This will be the hardest part: Tying together a PDA/smartphone, car computer, DRDs, home security and automation, and keeping everything in sync and updated. What I'm envisioning is an amalgam of rsync (For files to be copied automatically between devices), and PalmSync/iSync/ActiveSync for merging PIM data (Because there will be a lot of that flying around) with a little bit of remote notification thrown in ("Power went off." "So-and-so is calling." "Someone is at the door." "Don't forget ...").
I'll get into these more in future entries. I've got a bunch of stuff to do, still.
Tags: geek stuff, linux, mental masturbation, networking
Current Mood:  geeky
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I was sitting in my living room, watching TV tonight when my doorbell rang. This, in itself is curious. I don’t get many visitors, and from recent experience, it’s not necessarily a good thing when my doorbell sounds, unexpectedly. As a consequence of this situation, my cats do something perhaps not so peculiar; they bolt for cover. This I find quite odd, because they are very friendly and affectionate with me. Tweek is even now laying across my left wrist like he always does. Anyway, when my doorbell rang, after checking outside and not seeing any cars I recognized, I went down and looked through the peep hole. All I could see was an out-of-focus dark-green-spotted nothing. I literally could not see through my peep hole. I opened the door, but there was no one on my porch. I cleaned off the green finger-shaped smudge mark which was only on my peep lens. Asshole, whoever he is. Then I heard the sound of voices from the neighbor’s porch behind me. I heard a man and woman’s voice, exchanging pleasantries. Door to door salesperson, I’m guessing. I closed and locked the door and went back upstairs. A short time later, I heard a muffled thumb from the kitchen. I thought maybe the neighbor had hit the wall hard or something, and walked into the kitchen to make dinner. I heard another thump, this one sounded like it was coming from my upper cabinets, in the corner next to the fridge. Odd. I walked over and opened the door on my right. The usual assortment of seasonings and sandwich bags looked like it always did. I opened the left cupboard and Morpheen’s yellow-green eyes stared down at me from the top shelf. I couldn’t help myself. I started to laugh. Yes, you read that right, inside the cupboards. He had decided that was a good hiding place when the Evil Doorbell of Doom sounded, and he managed to close the door after him. Tags: cats
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Excerpts from a speech for this day:
"...Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children...
"...I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal'...
"...This will be the day, this will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning 'My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring!'...
"...And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every tenement and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: 'Free at last, free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at last.'"
- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (Aug 1963)
Tags: quotes
Current Mood: sad, yet hopeful
Current Music: I have no music anymore...
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Stupid Parents Blame Sprint for Doing Their JobGeebus. The audacity of some people. First, I've worked in phone tech support (I'm out now, thank God) and I can tell you that front-line customer service / technical support is about the worst job you can get besides flipping burgers. Average employee retention period is less than a year. In fact, when I interviewed with the last place, they wanted a one-year commitment as part of the interview process. Also, training is usually abysmal, too short (Often as little as 1-2 weeks) and not nearly informative enough. The first month out of training, new techs/CSRs almost always have to be re-trained, and it usually takes three to twelve months before a trainee is proficient enough to not have to put every (other) caller on hold while they go ask someone higher up. Many companies like it that way. If they can't shuffle their customer support off to another company to cut costs, who will in turn outsource it to India or Guatemala because they get paid by the phone call and can pay people $5 a day, the company will hire at about $7.50-9.00 an hour and doing so will get them people who don't know squat but need a job and don't want to go home every night reeking of Mcgrease . Second, supervisors are nearly non-existent in most front-line call centers. They're schmoozing their boss's boss in an attempt to climb the corporate ladder; they're stuck in endless meetings because they received no training when "promoted" to supervisor; or they're screwing off because they did their time as a phone jockey and now have "more important" things to do. In some places it's so bad that second-level techs (Who are the same as first-level techs except they get stuck in a "resource" queue or resource pod in addition to taking inbound calls) are instructed to state that THEY ARE supervisors and that there's no one above them to whom the customer can speak. In "good" companies, they have a queue specifically setup to handle law-enforcement calls, but often the techs are not told about it until they go to "resource" with their first call. It still boggles my mind how they can't seem to devote 5 minutes during a 1-2 week training course to saying: "This is very important, boys and girls. If someone calls up claiming to be a law-enforcement officer, dispatcher, etc. transfer them to queue 5555 (Or whatever)." The company should also have a direct-inbound number for law enforcement to call, so they can bypass the hold on the front-line queue. I've worked in some pretty lax companies but no company I have ever worked for would blindly give out customer information to someone claiming to be a law-enforcement agent, no matter what Caller ID said. Many times Caller ID is blank or wrong, and it is possible to spoof the number. That's why companies have special departments to deal with law enforcement. No company wants to get sued because one of their front-line gave a person's current location or home address to a stalker who says he's a cop or dispatcher. In many places (Most?) it's required by law. Finally, I have a son and my sister has two children. At no time have I EVER left my son in an unattended car, let alone with the engine running. My son is my pride and joy, and my job as a father is first and foremost to protect and nurture him. I always require that he hold my or his mother's hand when crossing a street or parking lot; I always keep an eye on him in a store, ANY store. Five seconds is all a kidnapper needs to take a child. I NEVER leave him alone in the car. It's part and parcel with being a parent. My sister loads her children into the car simultaneously for similar reasons. And really, it was the older child that needed to be in the car in the first place (to go to school), so there wasn't a reason to load the baby until the older child was at least buckling up (And any child who is old enough to go to school--even pre-school--is old enough to know how to at least partially strap themselves into their car seat). Tags: news commentary
Current Mood:  annoyed
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