Today you will play jazz, tomorrow you will betray your country. - 1930s Soviet propaganda poster
 
January 31st, 2005

Hallelujah, the Mac Is Back

A good read at Salon about less-obvious aspects of the Mac Mini strategy, or more accurately, why the whole Switch campaign didn’t work. About the differences between Mac people and PC people:

Mac people love their computers on a personal, emotional level. Windows people, on the other hand, prefer to think of their machines as office tools, gadgets no more special than the stapler. Windows users don’t expect much in the way of quality, beauty or elegance from their machines; if they did, they’d be Mac people.

and:

You do your taxes on your PC. You pay homage to John Coltrane on your iPod.

(more…)

Posted in Mac | 7 Comments »

January 30th, 2005

Oregon Buddhist Vihara

Birdhouse Hosting welcomes vihara.us, home to the Oregon Buddhist Vihara, a community of Sri Lankan monks serving the Portland, OR area. Also home of the Venerable Pallebage Chandrasiri Thero, Chief Sangha Nayake for North America.

vihara.us is administered by birdhouse co-pilot Kurt von Finck, who serves on the Vihara’s board of directors.

Music: Orchestra Baobab :: Ngalam

Posted in Hosting | 1 Comment »

January 30th, 2005

Mad Scientist

We’re scrambling to leave the house this morning, and the phone rings. I take the call on my shoulder, while pulling on shoes, then hear Miles in the kitchen: “Mommmm-eeee, heeelllp!” Mommy’s indisposed, better investigate. I hop in on one foot. The mad scientist is holding a coffee drip cone (the plastic kind with holes along the bottom) up to the filtered water dispenser that sits on the kitchen counter. He’s opened the valve but doesn’t know how to close it. Water is overflowing the cone, pouring out the holes, and running down his arm into his shirt. A gallon of water covers the kitchen floor.

… and I know we’re genetically linked because yesterday while we were out “playing soccer” he circled the bases of the baseball diamond backwards.

Yup, that’s my boy!

Music: Orchestra Baobab :: Sibou Odia

Posted in Family | 1 Comment »

January 29th, 2005

Leon Live

Went with friends to see the Kings of Leon at Slim’s tonight. Totally jamming Tennessee rock by a band of stringy-haired brothers (and one bearded cousin — the drummer, of course). Solid, enjoyable, but not quite the “magical” experience I had heard that their live shows can be.

We had set ourselves a question at the start of the night: Are these guys for real, or some kind of Spinal Tap for down-home rock? There’s something slightly unbelievable about them, hard to put your finger on. Something in their image that seems … overly intentional. Like they’re trying too hard to be from Tennessee or something. If you believe their biography, the Kings are the sons of an alcoholic preacher man. Sounds too good to be true. But then again, life is strange. At the end of the night, I’m still not sure, but am inclined to agree with Eggers that these guys are for real.

Just bummed the show was way short, and that I didn’t get to hear that track with the kick-ass yodeling.

Music: Fela Kuti :: You No Go Die… Unless

Posted in Music | 4 Comments »

January 29th, 2005

Eat the Hell Out of It

Before Unix security class last night, waiting for dinner in a fast-food joint, a middle-aged man with an embarrassing pony tail and army boots is striding toward the counter, cramming bites of cheeseburger into his mouth as fast as he can. By the time he gets the attention of an employee, he’s eaten half the burger. He thrust the remains out at arm’s length, in the face of the unfortunate worker. Mouth half-full of food, he barked: “No cheese! Just a Jumbo Jack, no onions, no cheese. Just a plain Jumbo Jack!” The worker stared at him, said nothing, gave him one.

As J.R. Bob Dobbs said, “Don’t just eat a hamburger. Eat the hell out of it.” Somehow I don’t think this is what he meant.

People.

Music: Caetano Veloso :: Meia-Lua Inteira (Full Half Moon)

Posted in Out there | No Comments »

January 28th, 2005

Open the Archives!

Interesting discussion on why the charge model that so many major newspapers have been using for years is backwards: Providing free access to the last 30 days’ worth of material, then charging you to access the archives. We normally regard old news as being of limited value. “Yesterday’s news is tomorrow’s fish and chip paper.” Or bird cage lining. A charge model in line with our normal view of the value of old vs. new news would turn that around.

The problem with the NYT’s system is that it ensures that the Times can’t be the paper of record any longer, because even if a thousand bloggers point to a great article on the day it comes out, thirty days later it will be invisible to the 99.999 percent of the Web who won’t pay for access to fishwrap, no matter how interesting.

Wired suggests the reason for the inversion is to protect the value of Lexis-Nexis, but I’m not sure I buy that. I think newspapers are just doing their best to find a workable business model for the web (still!), but not quite getting it.

Personally, I’m still fond of the multi-tiered Salon model: Give part of the article away for free, let people set up a temporary one-day free membership to gulp all the content they want, and offer two levels of yearly subscription (with or without ads). For the past couple of years, I’ve been motivated enough by Salon’s content to pay the yearly sub (with ads). And their freebies are nice too.

I don’t think publishers need to tear down the paywalls — they just need to figure out the real culture of the web audience, deliver content that’s more compelling than repackaged print copy, and find subscription models that actually motivate.

Music: Sneaker Pimps :: Wasted Early Sunday Morning

Posted in Media | 3 Comments »

January 28th, 2005

Year of the Green Chicken

Just recv’d one of ThinkGeek’s occasional email newsletters, with an unusually squinchy lede:

Welcome to the January newsletter where we sadly announce that the Year Of The Monkey is about (on 2/9) to be superceded by the Year Of The Rooster (or the year of the Green Chicken if you use the Five-Element Systems). Oh joy. Nothing funnier than a green chicken. In better news, it’s going to be the year 4702 in China so they’ve probably already engineered time travel. Perhaps they can go back in time and change 2005 to the Year Of The Jedi. Patience we must have…

Well, I do use the Five Element system, but why exactly is it the Year of the Green Chicken? Unfortunately, the answer isn’t quite as surreal as I had hoped. But still sounds auspicious to me. Happy Green Chicken, everyone.

Posted in Out there | No Comments »

January 25th, 2005

Girl Friday for Target Disk

Target disk mode is the greatest thing since sliced bread — connect two Macs with a FireWire cable, reboot one while holding the T key, and its hard drive appears on the desktop of the other, ready for data transfer. When I got the iMac a couple of weeks ago, decided to do my usual Carbon Copy Cloner stuff and blast a fully loaded OS and set of apps onto it (not sourced from my old Mac), then use target disk mode to load all of my user data on top of that. The process worked, but took a while and involved some pain (not worth going into).

Turns out, I’m lame.

Because I cloned it without ever booting it to “factory defaults” first, I never saw the new Setup Assistant Apple has apparently started shipping with all new Macs. Could have saved myself a few hours. When Amy’s Mini arrived yesterday, the Assistant appeared before the Desktop loaded — “Have an old Mac? Want to copy all your apps, user data and settings over? Plug in a FW cable, restart the old Mac with the T key down, and go have a smoke.” Well, it didn’t say that exactly, but something like it. Setup Assistant is basically a user-friendly intelligent wrapper around target disk mode. A Girl Friday for Mac migrations.

An hour later, the Mini was a nearly exact clone of her old machine – new OS and system apps, old user data, previously installed apps, and settings. Everything works flawlessly.

The Mini is even better IRL than pictured. Silent, small, fast, cheap, and beautifully designed. Apple hit one out of the park. It’s hard to get Amy excited about technology (she was talking about the plants in our yard while I was opening the carton), but after a morning using it, she’s totally in love with this box. And we have finally achieved a minor goal we set several months ago – a silent home office (it’s incredible how much noise two older PowerMacs can generate, and how that drone can get on your nerves in a subtle, background-y sort of way over time). The difference is night and day.

Music: His Name Is Alive :: Smooth

Posted in Mac | 11 Comments »

January 24th, 2005

Too Gay to Function

Interesting case of 3rd-level irony: In Longview, Washington, a school had a “Make your own T-shirt day.” One openly gay student took a lime-green tee, drew rainbows on it with magic marker, and inscribed the chest with the words “Too gay to function” (apparently lifted from the movie “Mean Girls”). The school sent him home for inappropriate dress, claiming the shirt was offensive to homosexuals. So credit is due to the school for being concerned about expression of potentially homophobic sentiments. But the student was openly gay!

“It’s quite aggravating,” he said. “I can’t wear my shirt because it’s discriminating against gays. … Why would I discriminate against myself?”

So, first of all, excellent shirt, dude. Second of all, what happens to rules and guidelines meant to protect people or groups from discrimination when those people or groups co-opt the very language from which the rules are meant to protect them? Replace “gay” with a racial slur and you see the problem. Funny story on the surface, but it does raise interesting questions.

Music: Cachao (Israel Lopez) :: Club Social do Marianao

Posted in Out there | 1 Comment »

January 24th, 2005

How Much Would You Pay?

Inspiring? A young Steve Ballmer pitching Windows 1.0 on television, a la late-night TV in the age before infomercials.

<Still shaking head… >

Requires, you guessed it, Windows Media Player (or VLC, I suppose).

Music: Sam Rivers :: Shockwave

Posted in Geek | 3 Comments »

January 23rd, 2005

Collision Course

Excellent new weblog by J-School student Marcus Wohlsen on the general theme of man and nature — evolution/creation, Huygens, mudslide, Tsunami vs. Rwanda in the public consciousness… Should be a good site to follow.

In the same way, Creationists believe we exist categorically apart from our ape ancestors — and therefore the entire process of natural selection itself. Which makes Creationists a ripe constituency for an administration that tries to bend the rules of ecology to its will as a matter of policy. Since we run the show, how could nature ever bite us back?

Aside: Heard a commentator on Air America today making the point that when Creationists call Evolution an “unproven theory,” they’re cherry-picking one unproven theory from so many in science. Gravity, quantum mechanics, etc. are all unproven theories. Much if not most of science is “unproven theory,” but still strong enough to get work done with, to do an adequate or excellent job of explaining the world around us. In other words, it’s valid to point out that we need to be careful about distinguishing fact from theory, but when ID-ers use this as a reason to put warning labels on textbooks, one has to ask why they choose to warn about evolution rather than any other “unproven theory.” The only explanation is that the “unproven theory” argument is yet another smokescreen, an attempt to legitimize their real agenda.

I actually know Marcus from a previous life – he went to school with Chris Tweney of Strata Lucida — Chris and I worked together at Ziff-Davis in Boston in the early-mid 90s. Went to a Martin, Medeski and Wood show in Boston with him once, never saw him again until he showed up at my office door a few months ago. Full circle (or semi-circle, or something).

Collision Course is running on SquareSpace, a next-gen online blogging/general-purpose CMS space I hadn’t heard of until now – looks promising.

Music: Rufus Thomas :: Sophisticated Sissy

Tags:
Posted in Misc | 2 Comments »

January 21st, 2005

Amy Sold a Print!

InflammationCongratulations to Amy for selling one of her photographic prints to a pair of Norwegian art collectors. Inflammation is a 30″x40″ (mural-size) image of a rotten banana — immense and grotesque, bursting at the seams with the fullness of its own decay. Kind of grim, but beautiful in a dark sort of way. Amy’s a master printer, but hasn’t had her hands in the chemicals since she became pregnant with Miles a few years ago. This was one of a pair of major works she’s sold in the past few years, what with her hands full being a mommy. Now itching to start creating new work. As Miles enters preschool before long, I look forward to hearing the click of shutters around the house again, to seeing her creative side in full blossom – one of the reasons I fell in love with her to begin with.

The woman who purchased “Inflammation” is an anesthesiologist. Go figure.

Posted in Family | 2 Comments »

January 21st, 2005

VirtualPC

When I bought the new iMac last week, also got a copy of VirtualPC with Windows XP — a complete Windows machine running in emulation in an OS X window. Don’t need Windows access often, except to verify that a site I’m working on isn’t too broken in Windows. But when I do, I have to haul an old laptop out of the garage, clutter up the desk, wait a year for it to boot… VirtualPC is a bit of a dog, as expected — a lot of math to turn all the bits inside out, but this machine has 2GB of memory, and VirtualPC really isn’t that bad. It actually boots faster than that laptop does, so there.

Odd – you can copy/paste between operating systems, but you have to toggle between Ctrl-C in Windows and Cmd-C on the Mac side. Kind of like standing with one leg in one country and the other in a…

Funny – literally five minutes after launching it for the first time, got a call from a client needing to know how to configure Outlook Express to work with the birdhouse mail server. “Funny you should ask,” I said, firing up OE in a VM while choking back tears (of laughter, joy, disgust).

Posted in Mac | 2 Comments »

January 20th, 2005

GeoTrust Certificate

Of course, my launch of the new birdhouse webmail system happened to conveniently coincide with the expiration of the demo security certificate that ships with CommuniGate, so users were getting confusing certificate notices from their browsers. Time to tackle certificates.

CGP provides an interface to generate a private key, which can the be submitted as a PEM-formatted token to an authority, or to OpenSSL. First tried generating a self-signed ticket from OpenSSL, but that of course still means that users get bothered by confusing “Warning: Self-signed certificate. Are you sure?” messages. In fact, IE on the Mac throws an alert that says “Communications will not be encrypted.” I’m not sure that’s actually true (if true, why doesn’t any other browser tell you that? A self-signed certificate should in no way affect whether communications are encrypted).

But I wanted these warnings to go away, so submitted my key to GeoTrust through a gateway provided by EV1 Servers. For some reason, certificates purchased that way are one-third the price of certificates purchased through GeoTrust directly.

A rather involved back-and-forth process of automated emails, answering questions on a web site, and recording my voice into their system through an automated telephone call-back system — actually very impressive identity authentication — and 15 minutes later received a certificate. Plopped it into the cert field in CommuniGate, and all browser warnings immediately disappeared on the webmail system.

Music: Liz Phair :: Uncle Alvarez

Posted in Hosting | No Comments »

January 20th, 2005

Puff of Smoke

Walk into my office, an acrid smell fills the air. Like burning hair, if that hair was puddled with lots of “product.” With even more chemical goodness.

“Is that smell coming from outside?” I ask.

“Not sure. Kind of weird. My Mac just blinked out while I was working, but I’m not sure if the smell is related.”

The Mac is still alive. Responds to keypresses, hard-switches down OK. I open the case. No smell inside, but it’s definitely getting more rank in the room. Heading toward toxic levels. I step back, and as I do, a beam of sunlight glances across the top of her monitor, over the vent holes. A stream of blue smoke is rising up from the monitor case.

“We have to get this thing out of here,” I say. I lean over to unplug it and the smell is choking. Like roasting weenies, if those weenies were made of polyethylene and industrial solvents. Hold my breath, squint my eyes, unplug, haul it outside. The smoking continues. I feel slightly nauseated.

Two hours later, a residual acridity still hangs in the air. Office mate says she wasn’t able to eat lunch. Funny how things reveal what they’re made of when they die.

Music: Urban Species :: The Experience

Posted in Work | 2 Comments »

January 19th, 2005

Wrong Side of the Train

Dude sitting across the aisle from me as the train rolls out of the station. Suddenly looks around, gets a worried look on his face. Stands up and moves across the aisle to sit down facing me. Looks me in the eye and says “Whew! I had sat down on the wrong side of the train!”

I heart Berkeley.

Posted in Out there | 5 Comments »

January 18th, 2005

nofollow

If an href tag includes the rel="nofollow" attribute, well-behaved search engines won’t follow the links they represent when spidering. So if there was a way to automatically modify the links that comment spammers leave in comments, their chief goal — raising their standings in the search engines — would be deflated.

SixApart has just released the nofolllow plugin, which scans incoming comments and adds rel="nofollow" to each embedded link automatically. Normal users are not affected — they can still click the links. But the simple presence of links to spammer’s sites will do nothing whatsoever for their GoogleRanks.

The downside, as I see it, is that for this to be effective, it must be intalled in the majority of weblogs. Spammers need to understand that their campaigns are flaccid, and that won’t be true until most of the world is using a solution like this.

Just installed nofollow at birdhouse and at the J-School.

Music: African Head Charge :: Far Away Chant

Tags:
Posted in Blogging | 4 Comments »

January 17th, 2005

Hillicans

Hell, apparently, just froze over. A group of Republicans dissatisfied with what they perceive as a dearth of anti-immigration rhetoric from the right claims to have found what they’re looking for in… Hillary. And are supporting her for president in 2008.

We will sit still no longer.  Why support Hillary Clinton you ask?  Let’s be crystal clear.  We would much rather be supporting a Republican, however, Senator Clinton is the only national figure who will most probably run for president in 08, who is speaking truth.  A hard truth.  Many of us have fallen into the same trap as you over the years.  Hillary is a radical.  Hillary is a liberal.  Is she left of the social positions many of us have?  You bet.  But then compare her social positions with say a Rudy or McCain, the probable Republican nominees and it is a wash.

Speaking of Hillary, enlighten me here. I’ve always been mystified by the right’s aversion to her. She’s smart, forthright, and totally inoffensive. There’s nothing arrogant or condescending about her. Maybe I’m wrong, but is the far right’s dislike of her solely because she’s female? It seems hard to imagine that a man with a similar demeanor would engender such fervent dislike. What is it about her that I’m not seeing?

Posted in Politics | 4 Comments »

January 17th, 2005

New Webmail for Birdhouse

Working over the past few weeks to revamp Birdhouse’s webmail system. Because the default interface for CommuniGate’s built-in webmail is beyond ugly, we’ve been running SquirrelMail over IMAP for webmail since launch. But Squirrel doesn’t offer access to all of CGP’s built-in goodies, such as mail searching, rule editing, calendar, tasks, notes, secure login, etc. The solution was in finding the great collection of 3rd-party Wassp skins by SolidInterface. Impressed enough that I bought a license (very affordable!) and went for it.

Launched the new system last night (with aliases redirecting from customer domains), and customer reaction has been very positive. Left Squirrel online at a separate subdomain for people who had grown used to it.

Posted in Hosting | 1 Comment »

January 15th, 2005

Origins of Dada

In Jon Carroll’s column in the Chronicle today, a nearly etymological reference, disconnected:

The origin of the word “dada” is muddled, and there probably never will be a definitive answer. In “The Dada Manifesto,” Romanian poet Tristan Tzara wrote: “Freedom: DADA DADA DADA, the howl of clashing colors, the intertwining of all contradictions, grotesqueries, trivialities: LIFE.” And there you have it.
Music: Kings Of Leon :: Rememo

Posted in Out there | 1 Comment »

January 13th, 2005

Good Afternoon, Mary

Freaky and somewhat beautiful, totally obsessive, but just strangge enough to justify itself, 2004: The Stupid Version — a short film about iPods by David Wellington and Adrian Peters (mneptok points out that the film is apparently called simply “iPods”). Walking SF streets tonight, looking at all the iPod Minis dangling from necks, all the “Life is Random” bus stop posters, perhaps the film is not so far off the mark. Other films by the pair here, but not as good.

Posted in Mac | 3 Comments »

January 12th, 2005

Kings of Leon != Strokes + Allmans

Dave Eggers has apparently started doing a monthly column for Spin Magazine (once upon a time, i.e. back in college, I subscribed and read like religion). His debut article is on why you should be digging Kings of Leon and why, no, they don’t sound like a cross between The Strokes and The Allman Brothers. The timing is perfect. My initial impression of Kings of Leon was that they were a less-interesting Strokes, with less city in their blood. Two days of Kings on the iPod and I’m begging forgiveness for forming opinions too quickly. Eggers explains why.

Kings of Leon are motorboats on crowded lakes and waterskiing in cutoffs and hiding Milwaukee’s Best in the forest, in the snow, in January, because your parents caught on that you were keeping cases in the fridge in the garage. Kings of Leon are knowing a guy in juvie and having a cousin who’s been in jail twice. And that cousin, by the way, the one with the burns all over his right forearm–nothing interesting, just an accident with coffee–that cousin, Terry, would love Kings of Leon if he gave them a chance.

Thanks Andrew

Music: Dead Meadow :: Dusty Nothing

Posted in Music | 4 Comments »

January 11th, 2005

Play-Dough Hat Hair

Miles was wearing his fireman’s hat for like three hours tonight, never left his head. Amy finally went to take it off him, only to find it stuck. Hunh? She pries it off and looks inside: A big honkin’ lump of blue Play-Dough, mushed into the dome and glommed into his hair. Then more fun discovering that a small wad of Play-Dough can be used to make a little plastic person walk up the side of a wooden house. Making Play-Dough hamburgers, um-um (ice cream), green beans, making sure everyone gets a bite. Learning the difference between eating food made out of Play-Dough for real and eating it for pretend. Learning why it’s not the best idea to mix the colors too thoroughly, or to let dried bits of Play-Dough from previous sessions become intermingled with the current project.

Two months ago Play-Dough was this bizarre substance he wasn’t quite sure what to make of, regarded with trepidation; now it’s an obsession surpassed only by Thomas the Tank Engine (more on Thomas another night).

Music: Black Arks :: Come Along

Posted in Family | No Comments »

January 11th, 2005

Mac Mini 2U

So… how long before someone sticks four Mac minis in a 2U rack for a cheap $2k server cluster? (e.g. web, mail, dns, and sftp). Just a dynamite little box for sysadmins. Amy’s jazzed – ordering one for her tonight; she’ll attach it to the Studio Display I’m using now, and I’ll switch to 20″ iMac. Two machines for what a PowerMac would have cost. More KoolAid!

Music: Circle Jerks :: Product of My Environment

Posted in Mac | 15 Comments »

January 10th, 2005

WebDAV on Birdhouse

A birdhouse user wanted the ability to publish their iCal calendar to their own site rather than purchasing a .Mac account, so I’ve enabled WebDAV in apache. For now, I’m enabling user-home-level (or custom dir) WebDAV access on a per-request basis.

WebDAV alone does not give a server the ability to parse iCal .ics files into web-enabled calendars — users still need to subscribe to the .ics file and view it locally in iCal. To produce a full Web calendar from an .ics file requires post-processing by some kind of server-side software. Apple uses a proprietary WebObjects system, but open source equivalents are available — will look into those soon.

DAV functionality goes beyond iCal subscription access — users who want it can now mount their birdhouse home dir directly in the Finder or Explorer (or use any DAV client, such as Goliath). Working out a couple of small kinks before a full rollout.

Music: Kings Of Leon :: Velvet Snow

Posted in Hosting | No Comments »

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