I have been considering using the SOC blog as more of a blog and posting all of my programming related posts there and leaving this one as more of a general blog. I have some posts coming soon for programming related things and I’m trying to figure out what makes more sense: posting them here where they’ll get a few more eyeballs, or posting them on SOC where the site is all about programming — albeit a programming podcast that hasn’t seen an episode since late 2009.

In short, the future is muddy. Hopefully I’ll be able to shed some more light on things as the next month or two roll on.

This week’s show is a bit different in that we’ve scrapped our regular show format to take a moment to interview our musically-inclined geeky guest, Chopper Newt from The Lizards From Afar.

Sit back and have a listen.  Its a pretty interesting interview, and a nice break from our regular show format.

Aussie Geek Podcast #009.

If you’re interested in the offer, visit the CodeWeavers website to sign up.

If you want to read more about the background of this story, check out Michael Rose’s post on TUAW.

The long and the short of it: You have George W. Bush to thank (sorta) for your opportunity to buy free software.

Organize your Photos
This is a relatively time consuming task that I rarely take the time to do.  A “net-outage” is a great time to pour through the photos in your computer and group or rename the files.  If you use a photo organizing program like iPhoto or Aperture on the Mac, or Google’s very popular Picasa on Windows you can use these programs to do much of the tedious file management for you.

Blog Something
I find that one of my biggest impediments to getting a bunch of blogging done is my rather short attention span.  When I’m online researching a story for an article I tend to get lost surfing the Internet looking for new and exciting things.  Being offline for a few hours, or  even a couple of days, can provide you extra time to focus on getting that article written, or in some cases provide inspiration for a whole new article (or two).  I managed to a get a couple of good articles out of my unexpected “grey mode” period.

Write a Letter
We’ve all said it at one time or another, often when frustrated or annoyed, “I’m going to write a letter!”  Well, here’s your chance.  Bring up your favourite word processor, or text editor and bang out some phrases that are sure to convince your audience that you’re right (and that you should get a free case of coke the next time you shop there).  Letters to politicians or other elected officials are also great candidates.

Play a Game
Assuming you have games on your computer which aren’t of the MMO variety playing them can be a great way to kill some time.  A couple of games that I’ve purchased over the last couple of years are Escape Velocity: Nova (EV:Nova) and WingNuts 2.  Both of these games are sci-fi shooters, with EV:Nova extending the genre with trading and other somewhat less violent activities.  EV:Nova also supports a wide ranging plugin architecture that will allow you to download (prior to the network outage, of course) plugins from other players to extend the game or cheat the system.

So there you have it.  A few ways to get your geek on without access to the cloud.  So the next time you find yourself in a coffee shop and don’t feel like paying exorbitant fees to check your email.  Try out a cloud-free activity.  Hey you might even find yourself more productive!

I saw a rather significant spike in traffic as millions of Gmail users checked out the blog, and a few hundred of them clicked through on the trackback which showed up as a result of the post.  Go figure.

The day started off in the hotel room poaching free wi-fii off a local hospital.  It’s damn decent of them to offer a wi-fi hotspot free to patients and their families (and geeks who are willing to sit at an odd angle near the hotel window).  I was completing a draft of an email that I was planning to send to the mayors of Burnaby and Vancouver on the topic of municipally supported wi-fi.  The email got written up, I checked the twitter feeds (fired off a tweet or two I think) and then headed to my first destination.

I hopped on the “T” as they call it in Boston and took the Green line all into the heart of the city and Government Center.  This is the central government complex and one end of the area served by Boston’s open wi-fi pilot that they’re conducting with ISP Galaxy Internet.  I headed across the street to the Faneuil marketplace and parked myself on a bench.  I wasn’t gonna hang around very long because it was bloody cold and windy, but I stuck it out long enough to fire off the email and quickly blog the experience.  As much as I was enjoying the free signal and 5-bar signal strength (over 90%) it was time for me to g as there were three more stops on this tour and it was already approaching 11:00am.

I re-boarded the “T” and headed out towards Cambridge.  My first stop was the MIT museum.  I got off the train and walked through the streets of Cambridge past several campus buildings.  The architecture on some was quite unique, and there were a great deal fewer old buildings in and around the area.  Much of it appeared to be mid-20th century construction or newer.  The walk from the “T” station to the museum was longer than I had anticipated but provided me a look at a side of Cambridge I wouldn’t have otherwise had the chance to see.

When I arrived at the museum the first thing that struck me was the austere, spartan look of the main floor.  It was very functionally laid out, with lots of “white space”.  The most interesting exhibit on the main floor was that of the CityCar.  This is a project being proposed by MIT professors and graduate students to create a pool of electrically powered cars for use in urban settings, much the same way bicycle pools exist in major European cities today.

On the upper floor was an extensive robotics exhibit and though much of the material was dated (mid-late 1990s) it gave great insight into the directions of artificial intelligence research and robotics.  I got a chance to see the original “Kismet” robot which was neat after having seen so many Discovery channel programs about it.  There was also some DNA and genetics research on display, and through I read and was able to understand the words, much of the significance escaped me this time around.

After MIT’s museum, I re-boarded the “T” and headed for Harvard Square.  Once I arrived, the only thing I could contemplate was lunch, it was nearly 2:00pm after all,  On the recommendation of Miss604 via the Twtittersphere I was able to find a great place for a pint and a quick meal.  I stopped in at John Harvard’s Brew House.  The atmosphere was a bit dead in the lull between lunchtime and happy hour, but I was able to get my geek on by getting some writing done on the Technological Dependence post, and it was in fact my lack of a paper map and an attempt to Google-search my way to directions (instead of asking for directions or a map) which inspired that post.  (Sidenote: I did eventually FAIL with the digital maps and find my way to one of the paper variety.)  The food was pretty good.  I followed the aforementioned recommendation and tried out the Meatloaf (in sandwich form at lunchtime) and with it a pint of the Sam Adams Nut-brown ale (they were out of the porter).  I don’t know if there’s enough for a Ho Yummy.com review but it was certainly a decent pub lunch.

After lunch was the final stop for the afternoon, a trip to the Harvard Museum of Natural History, and the Peabody Museum.  This was geekery of a different kind.  I’ve always been a fan of history, and this gave me a chance to explore some great exhibits on geology, archaeology and to a lesser degree, palaeontology.  There wasn’t a whole lot to differentiate this museum from other similar ones I’ve visited in the past.  In fact it was relatively small when compared to the Field museum in Chicago or even the Royal BC Museum in Victoria; however for a school museum it was very well maintained and they allowed flash photography.

All in all it was a very enjoyable day.  I took a few dozen shots, some of which I’ve featured here, the rest of which are in the Flickr set for the trip.  If you’re ever in Boston, take a day trip out to Cambridge and check out the sights.  They’re wonderful cities, full of history, and a great place for a little geeky adventure.

Image Credit: carolclarinet on Flickr

As these devices have made their way into our lives, the concept of convergence has helped them stick.  Two hundred years ago, the only way to communicate with someone was either in person, or by post.  Then came the invention of the telegraph.  This would allow someone to send a text-message to someone in another city by way of an electrical current.  Really, this was the predecessor to email, fax and text messaging.

Seventy years later, Alexander Graham Bell was busy working on a device to help his wife hear, and in the process managed to invent the telephone.  Imagine, being able to have a conversation with someone across the country much the way you would if they were sitting in the next room.  Before long these technologies began to make their way into every home in the Western world.  You could contact anyone, at home or at their place of business and speak to them directly.  The information age was upon us.

By the time I made my way on the scene in the early 1980s phones were commonplace, analog phones were beginning to give way to faster and higher-capacity digital phone systems.  With these came the advent of the modem — a device solely designed to translate analog telephone signals into digital signals for processing by a computer.  The age of the Internet was beginning.

This brings me to the 1990s and the start of my serious involvement with technology.  I was fascinated by the ability of computers to connect and talk to each other pretty early on.  Being able to exchange files with my friends via the local BBS was quite amazing to me at first, but soon became a primary method of communication (even if it did take an hour to download a file over ZMODEM on my 2400 baud modem!) for passing geekery, photos and games back and forth with a few friends who “got it” early on.

As technology continued to improve, so did my Internet experience.  We soon upgraded to a 56k modem which allowed us to download more than 20 times faster.  I could download the new 1.2MB Wolfenstein Demo (which wasn’t really new) in only several minutes.  But this really was only beginning, because a few short years later came ADSL.  This may have been the beginning of my technological dependence.

As things were progressing on the home Internet side of things, things were also progressing with my own personal communications.  By the mid-1990s (sometime between 56k and ADSL) I managed to convince my parents to buy me a cell phone.  A communications device of my very own.  We had tried to convince our parents to get us a second phone line, just for the kids.  Something they begrudgingly did as the Internet became more popular because, well, they couldn’t get or make a phone call after we came home in the evening.  But back to the cell phone, my first phone was what I liked to call the Motorola “Brick”.  I don’t know the exact model for it.  This phone lasted me for about three years and quickly became my constant companion.   This may also have been the beginning of my technological dependence.

When I speak of my technological dependence, I do so in the context of activities that I used to be able to do unassisted, but which now seem to require some sort of technological intervention.  Let me provide an example.  When I go to a large event, or even a shopping mall with friends or my family, often times we’ll split up and explore individual activities.  If one of us has forgotten their cell phone, or has managed to run out of batteries this tends to propose a rather large problem: how will we meet up later if I can’t call Jimmy on his cell phone?  In these instances I’m reminded that I haven’t always had a cell phone, and at some point in the past nobody did.  How did they manage to co-ordinate their activities?  Pre-arrange a meeting time with friends?  Wow.  What a concept.

In other cases the technological dependence has taken the shape of changes in the fundamental ways that we conduct certain activities.  For this example, I’ll employ an experience from a recent trip to the airport.  When checking in at the airport the airlines now have a vastly reduced number of check-in agents.  Why?  Because all they need to do now is check your bags and place a sticker on them.  Your boarding pass?  You deal with that at a computer terminal before you queue up.  Not handy with computers?  Well, you’ll just have to figure it out for yourself.  The process is entirely computerized.  Add to this that all the security equipment is powered by computers and you’ve got a pretty technology dependent industry.  Never mind a power failure.  If there were to be a major failure in an airport’s computer network (border router failure, cable cut) it would put the entire airport out of commission until it was fixed.

In still other cases our dependence shows in our inability to follow the guidelines that technology gurus have been spouting for years.  The one that comes foremost to my mind is that of “Backup! Backup! Backup!”  The majority of people who use computers on a daily basis don’t back up their data regularly, if at all.  I’ve been guilty of this myself on occasion, and have been remarkably fortunate with relatively few disastrous events though I’m far from immune to the data-loss syndrome.  Our lack of ability to simply copy and paste data into another location is astounding.  As with most things in life it’s the people who’ve had the most dire failures who tend to be the advocates for helping people to avoid future catastrophes, so considering their wealth of knowledge, why don’t we listen?

Now despite my deliberately negative slant on the first two examples of technological dependence, the news isn’t all bad.  Technological dependence is simply and indication of how society has developed technologies which are so useful that they’ve permeated the daily lives of billions of people around the globe.  What we need to do as a collective in the years and decades to come is to develop methods to keep the technology we use sustainable and mitigate failures of the technology so that only the most disastrous events could ever disrupt the service.  Some of these solutions will be high-tech solutions that will require investment in infrastructure or new product development.

For the airport example, and admittedly this is something that is probably already done to some degree, ensure that there are multiple points where a network connects to the outside world.  By ensuring that network infrastructure is made redundant and is kept as physically separate as possible, the airport can continue to operate with little or no time spent with systems being offline.  The same would apply for connections to the power grid.  Though simple in concept, a solution like this is relatively complex compared to those for some of the other problems I presented.

The backup problem represents trying to a fundamental behaviour in people: we’re lazy.  The only backup solutions that tend to work very effectively are those which are automated and which we don’t have to think about unless disaster strikes and we need to recover our data.  To solve this problem there are a few possibilities.  Backup services which with only a few clicks of the mouse we can connect to and have them store our data.  Easy enough for most people, and as long as you’re happy with your information sitting on some company’s servers this is a viable solution.  The second (and admittedly more complex solution) is to back up everything to an external hard drive and store that in another location.  This requires planning, forethought and at the very least a spare drawer in the desk in your office to store the drive offsite.  This also requires more up-front investment than the previous example, but doesn’t have any ongoing monthly charges.  In both cases the backup can be relatively automated and off your mind.

Let’s not forget about that pesky dead cellphone problem either.  There is one really easy solution for this one too.  Plan ahead.  Try it sometime, all the cool kids are doing it.  By agreeing on a predetermined time and place to meet up, you can avoid those nasty “Where’s Jimmy??” scenarios and save on precious cellphone minutes to boot!  Now if anyone raises their hand and says that “but I use my cell phone to tell time?  I can’t check the time if I don’t have my phone!” — I have two solutions for you, ask someone or build a sundial.  Oh wait; you probably need the internet access from your phone to get the sundial instructions off Google… scratch that.  The second solution is to bring your iPod.

Photo Credits: marcin wichary, lady madonna, rebelniko, alexmuse, kevin

Good morning Your Worships,

I’m writing this letter to you from the city of Boston where I’m currently on vacation.  The subject of this letter is also the service which is allowing me to send it; Boston’s first open-Wi-Fi project.  The city has partnered with local companies to provide free Wi-Fi access to residents and visitors of the city’s Faneuil Marketplace.

I would like to promote the idea of starting up a open Wi-Fi project in the Lower Mainland.  With the pending influx of international visitors to the region, providing an easy way for them to stay connected to their families and report back on their adventures in BC would cast a brilliant light on our ability to embrace new technologies and the region’s vision for the future.

While covering the entire region in time for the Olympics is hardly a feasible option, placing the free access in some key locations around the region could be both cost-effective, and provide basic access to a large number of people.

A couple of examples would be:
- Key Olympic Venues (GM Place, Skating Ovals etc.)
- Library Square, Vancouver
- Robson Square, Vancouver
- Pacific Center, Vancouver
- Metrotown, Burnaby
- Deer Lake Park, Burnaby

I know there was talk about placing Wi-Fi access points in Vancouver a few years ago, in fact I believe it was mentioned on Mayor Sullivan’s blog.  With the  coming international attention on the city, I feel this would be an excellent opportunity to showcase the region’s growing technology sector and to make the Olympic and Paralympic games that much more accessible to the world.

Thank you,

Keith Murray

That’s it!  I’ll let everyone know if I hear back from either Mayor.  It’s really windy, and I’ve chosen an outdoor location.  Time to run!

This is a move by the city of Boston which will help to improve the level of technological livability and help the local residents to take advantage of high-speed Internet access where they wouldn’t have necessarily had the opportunity in the past.  This got me to thinking about the situation with Wi-Fi access in the Lower Mainland.

Vancouver has no such municipally supported Wi-Fi efforts, despite some rumblings from the Mayor’s office a couple of years ago.  With the large influx of international visitors that will be descending on the city in the run up to the Olympic games in less than 21 months (642 days as of this writing) the city is in danger of becoming a technological relic.  Wi-Fi coverage in the city is rapidly improving, but it’s all being done by local businesses.  Private companies who are offering free access to the Internet to to their customers.  The problem is that these Wi-Fi networks are not standardized or linked in any way.  Though there are many places in the city that you can pick up a signal, you need to constantly re-connect as you move throughout the city.  This makes technologies like voice-over-IP inconvenient at best, and unmanageable at worst.

The City of New Westminster is once again evaluating the merits of city-wide Wi-Fi.  The issue was raised several years ago but never made it to council.  That delay has provided time for the city to learn from the successes and challenges experienced by other cities across North America and around the world.  Michael McQuillan recently published a piece on this discussion and notes that New Westminster’s small physical size make it an ideal candidate for a “mesh”-style Wi-Fi network.

Tomorrow I’m going to head down and try out Boston’s free Wi-Fi.  I’ll use it to send an email to Mayor Sullivan, and Mayor Corrigan of Burnaby to see if I can get their thoughts on municipally-supported Wi-Fi initiatives.

After nearly 9 months of Google Adsense, I’ve managed $3.56.  Since Google requires $100 in your account before they will pay out, I’m on schedule to be paid out in Late 2028.  A bit too late to cover costs of blogging (though it would make a nice almost 50th birthday present.  :razz: )

The Amazon and TTZMedia affiliate programs have also had similar results with a payout from TTZ media due sometime in 2048… and that’s only a $25 payout.

In short, I don’t get enough traffic, and my readers on average aren’t the type to click on enough ads (hell most use Firefox and AdBlock Plus!) to provide an income stream.

An added bonus: the site loads faster now!  :mrgreen:

Here is an excerpt from the email sent to Canadian Jott users today:

In an effort to protect your privacy, most Canadian mobile providers have blocked caller ID information from being passed to toll free numbers. This leaves the alternative of using local access numbers across the country, so that everyone can send Jott messages without having to pay long distance fees.

Here are the new Canadian local numbers

I’ve been using Jott off and on for the past couple of months, and with the addition of local Canadian numbers, I can definitely see this becoming a regular part of my GTD arsenal.

So much in today’s world needs to be justified with numbers showing us that there is a quantifiable value for every decision. When a company spends money, more often than not they want to know how spending that money will make them more money. This is the concept of return on investment (ROI). How to spend $1 and make $2 as a result. (OK, finance lesson over with).

But not everything is easily quantifiable, or measurable. How to measure employee satisfaction or my personal favourite “engagement” with verifiable, hard numbers? These are by nature qualitative measures.

Photo credit: SqueakyMarmot on Flickr

With a new generation of employees moving into the workplace, the so-called Millennials (Gen Y), that values a balance between work and their personal life, companies are having to adjust. In areas where younger workers are the norm, or at least make up a significant percentage of the population steps are being taken to introduce an atmosphere targeted at attracting and retaining talent. By providing games tables, comfortable seating or in some cases refreshments to employees as a “perk” of the job, some companies are aiming to make work a more fun and balanced place to be.

But if you’re wanting to get some leather recliners or a foosball table into the office, how do you justify the benefits of this to the powers that be? Where are your numbers? There is precious little in the way of hard facts to “prove” the beneficial nature of these perks. There is, however, mounds of anecdotal evidence to show that happy and relaxed employees are more productive and more creative during the hours that they are performing their duties.

This is one of the intangibles that make up a balanced work culture and lead to a more relaxed and creative workforce. By providing a “chill-out space” something with comfortable seating and (god forbid) maybe a television, your hard-working employees have a place to recharge their batteries mid-day and continue to deliver for the company until late in the afternoon.

Photo credit: tojosan on Flickr

I’m not saying that companies should employ masseuses, or servers to cater to employees while they’re on the job (as alleged by 60 minutes), but provide some benefits that help to enhance the experience of going to work. Why does work need to be dull and boring? Invest some money. If even one employee stays instead of leaving for another company, it will be worth your time. The return on your investment comes in the form of not wasting productive hours training yet another new employee (probably another millennial).

So in an effort to collect some more of those anecdotal stories, and maybe even some hard numbers, tell us about your workplace. Do you have a “chill-out space” to use? Does it help? Is it something you would look for in a prospective employer?

The one major thing missing from Flickr Fight is it’s lack of attribution for any of the photos it displays.  It simply links to the images stored on the Flickr server and doesn’t bother to provide a link to the photo’s page in flickr, or credit the photographer/owner of the image in any way, shape or form.

This is the kind of IP violations that make posting legitimate content online a risky venture.  If people don’t consider copyright violations of online material legitimate, then how will these forms of content distribution ever be considered good, legitimate viable sources??

Shame on Flickr Fight, and shame on AppScout for not picking up on this glaring omission.

For several years now I’ve wondered what the name of this song is.  It’s been used in countless soundtracks, commercials, movies, well the list goes on.  And I’ve never been able to find anyone who knows who wrote it, performed it or what the name of it was… until now.

I found this post through my RSS reader tonight (I’m a bit behind on some of my blog reading….).  As I was catching up on the latest from “wwdn: in exile” I found a post entitled joe morello  is a god.

[youtube:http://youtube.com/watch?v=DDOgYw5-pNs&feature=related]

Now I know that the song is called Take Five, from an album called Time Out. The YouTube clip pictured above is the Dave Brubeck Quartet from 1961.  I was trying to find different clip from the one Wil already posted, but it really does appear to have the best audio of all the original Dave Brubeck clips.

I got confirmation today that the folks over at Schmapp have selected one of my photos for inclusion in their 2007 Los Angeles travel guide in the “Best of the Beach” section.

The photo is one I took of the Santa Monica pier when we were in LA last fall.

I’m proud to have had a photo selected.  I (and hundreds of others) had our Creative Commons licensed photos found on Flickr and were asked to submit them for consideration.

The original image, and all of the other shots I took on that trip are up in my Flickr account.

Though the battle is far from over with technology giants like Intel and Microsoft backing the Toshiba-led HD-DVD format.  Disney and Fox have both committed to the Blu-Ray format.  WB has been producing movies in both formats until now.  With the decision to move to the Blu-Ray format, this tilts the scales in the direction of the Sony-backed format quite significantly, particularly for movies.

One possibility we may see is Blu-Ray being adopted for movies, and HD-DVD being adopted for the video game industry, particularly given Microsoft’s support of the format in it’s XBox 360 console.

This is in addition to the other little “hidden gem”… Those cute kids in Cupertino thought it would be cute to paint every non-mac computer with the Blue Sceen of Death… funny… Cobalt (seen below) is running Ubuntu 7.10…..

I wonder what other hidden gems might be waiting for me… a working flash player perhaps?

Please enjoy the new site, let me know what you think, and don’t mind the dust as the tweaking continues over the next while.

For those of you subscribing subscribing to the blog, please use the Feedburner feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/kdmurray as it will insulate you against silly little things like my changing the domain name.

http://www.1-click.jp/

In my very brief review from the other day, I mentioned that the two cameras carry nearly identical specs, and at the end of the day both of them are going to take excellent pictures.

I’ve posted some of my (very) early efforts up on flickr. Comments welcome. As I get more time with the camera I’ll post some more about my experiences with it.