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Last year at WWDC I had a near out of body experience. I related most of that here. To recap, I used some software that I work with at my day job (Landmark Digital Services) that I had shoehorned into an iPhone to identify a number of songs at an event at the Apple WWDC conference. To this day, I still consider it my 15 seconds of fame. I even have the audio someone in the audience captured of the event. A few months later, everyone with an iPhone would have access to this technology via the Shazam iPhone application (Shazam is a licensee of the Landmark Digital BlueArrow technology).
This year at WWDC, I was once again looking forward to Stump the Experts - the event that gave me my 15 seconds. I wasn’t planning on trying to identify any music this year. Everyone has the technology now, and I knew that if Fred Huxham and Mark “The Red” Harlan - the masterminds of this event were going to continue with the music identification tradition, it wouldn’t be recognizable by any published methods. I had my time in the sun. I was looking forward to meeting Mark again after his comments on this blog about the event last year. He even promised me a copy of his book on Texas Hold’em (which I’ll be reading on the plane ride back home).
I was a bit taken aback when at the beginning of Stump this year, I was invited onto the stage to sit with Apple Experts in front of a couple thousand people where the previous years events were retold and I was congratulated for “breaking” a part of the Stump. It was an amazing honor, and I thank Fred and Mark for extending my 15 seconds for a few more.
It amazes me how many times I’ve overheard people at the conference this year retelling the story of “that guy at the Stump”. Now that I spend more of my time managing developers and working with finance and business development, I have little opportunity to extend my geek cred with programming projects. Sure glad that I spent some of my spare time on that little skunkworks development project - it has definitely paid back in spades. It also reminds me why I started programming computers back on an Atari 800XL some thirty odd years ago - the thrill of creation and seeing a piece of code deliver its magic…
NOTE: If you happen to have any photos of the beginning of Stump this year, please let me know. I really would like to have a photograph of myself up on the stage!
Just another husband, father, employee, software developer, writer, liver of life. More available here.
Another in a series of serious warning flags about cloud computing… Centralized authority, centralized power, centralized control, centralized data, centralized risk… BAD. BAD. BAD. How many times can the industry keep returning to the burned out husk of central vs distributed computing. Seems we’re constantly being herded back to the mainframe.
UPDATE: More #googlefail articles: PC/Mac World and this amazing graph of the “Great Googelapse”.
Jesse Ventura, past wrestler, Navy Seal, and libertarian - if not a bit odd and eccentric, still has a great idea… a friend of mine said he would bring the popcorn. I would pay good money to watch… it could be a Pay-Per-View thing and could be hosted by the WWF.
500,000+ die worldwide from regular old flu every year. 36,000 die in the U.S. from regular old flu every year. So far, the 2009 H1N1 flu (also known as the 2009 swine flu outbreak, Mexican flu, or swine-origin influenza) has 188 officially confirmed cases, and 8 confirmed deaths. Does this seem fairly minimal in the scale of the yearly standard flu pandemic?
So, yes, Spanish Flu (a historical variant of swine flu) killed 40-100 million in 1918-1920. Fortunately, mortality rates, healthcare, and hygienic knowledge have come a long way. This isn’t Ebola with a mortality rate approaching 90%. Yet, Egypt killed all its pigs. Some countries are talking about forced confinement for anyone who has a cough. China and Russia have started restricting American imports. Some countries are turning away anyone entering the country with flu symptoms. The news media is having a collective orgasmic feast due to an obviously dry news cycle.
Maybe we should ban cars? They kill 43,000 people in the U.S. per year and over 260,000 children worldwide… that’s more than the regular flu and all worldwide swine flu outbreak deaths combined. How about we just outlaw smoking? 435,000 deaths in the U.S. per year. Outlaw McDonalds? Obesity causes up to 365,000 U.S. deaths per year. How about we outlaw sex? STDs cause 20,000 deaths in the U.S. per year.
I haven’t blogged about it yet because I want to do it justice, but it is just impossible to do - we have a new addition to the family - a beautiful baby girl. I will post an entry soon with pictures for those interested. Obviously, new baby = big changes. Big changes often initiate reassessment and a self-priority readjustment. I’ve often tried to simplify life, and this event requires another attempt at simplification and a renewed focus on what’s important. This requires yet another census of my time, a valuation of what requires my attention and what needs to be the focus to maintain a positive and healthy life for my family and myself.
I’m not completely sure what this means yet. A few things are already on the cutting board. Facebook didn’t make the cut. While Facebook provided an interesting mechanism to keep up with some people I hadn’t kept in touch with, I realized that maybe there was a reason why I didn’t keep in touch with a bunch of them in the first place (not being ugly - people move in and out of your life naturally). It also posed security and privacy concerns that in my mind are not resolvable. I thought about it keeping it around and just having family and closest friends, but I have better outlets for communicating with those people without the headaches and awkward social situations that it creates. Not to mention I was spending waaay too much time playing Mafiawars!
With the ejection of Facebook, I think my blog may be an even more important avenue for communicating with family and friends. The problem with that is twofold. First, the lack of security - I currently don’t have sections of my blog for family where I can post family information or pictures vs that I intend for general consumption. Second, the random nature of my postings here, which can range from technical to political rants. The political rants bug me the most, since I generally think I keep my political stylings fairly close to the vest in the non-virtual world, yet I’m pretty outspoken here, creating a dichotomy between my real and my virtual personas. Therefore, I think I’m going to do some reorganization on the blog so friends and family don’t get blasted with my political rantings, my technical friends can more easily see that material, and my brother (and maybe one or two other people), who like to rip apart my political rants can see it when they want.
So, it’s time to beef up my PHP and Wordpress skills and start hacking… more to come…
Seriously, for the unitiated: teabagging.
Definiton #3 and #4 were what came to my mind. In the future, #6 will as well.
I posted a short comment on Facebook:
I love all these folks “teabagging”. Protesting taxation without representation? Uh. No. Protesting high taxes? Uh, no. Lowest taxes in ages.
Someone I respect commented that these events are about wasteful and irresponsible spending. My father echoed a similar comment when I talked with him the other day.
This is where it gets confusing. Me, personally? I’m a libertarian who thinks wasteful government spending is bad. Although I’m also a bit pragmatic and think that the minimal amount of government should be spent on things like protecting our civil liberties and preserving life (including healthcare). That stated, I hate politics… I hate the hypocrisy.
These “teabagging” events are political rallies. They are staged by the Republicans as an attempt to shock some life back into a party which has betrayed its roots and become the party of big spending, corporate socialism, imperialism, and fascism. So, it is with great distrust and even anger that I approach folks like Dick Armey and Glenn Beck railing about the tax and spend Obama administration.
Disclosure, yes, I did vote for Obama. I voted for Obama because I could not ethically accept another 4 years of the same old Republican administration. The only chance I had for change is if the people of the United States punished the Republican Party for its failings.
But what about Ron Paul? He ran as a Republican? Sure he did. He ran an amazing campaign despite the fact that the Republican Party and Fox News network were suppressing his speech and tearing him apart as a lunatic when he preached against bailouts, expensive wars without purpose, and irresponsible spending. Now all these same parties seem to have found the light - now that a neocon isn’t in office. Hypocrites…
So, about these teabagging events… watching the local news, it doesn’t appear that a lot of the people they are interviewing care about big government or big spending at all. Certainly they can’t be following in the ideological footsteps of the original “Tea party” which was specifically protesting taxation without representation.
The signs: “Born free but taxed to death”, “Taxed to Death”, “T.E.A. Taxed Enough Already”… they interviewed this middle-aged woman wearing a hat adorned with tea bags hanging on strings: “The government is taking all our money” (speak it in your most stereotypical southern drawl). Sure, quite a few had signs about government spending, but these events seem to cater to the lowest common denominator, and the basest elements of an obviously ignorant populous (since taxes already are low and the latest moves have been to continue to lower taxes for the bulk of Americans).
I am TOTALLY against the bailouts. But the first bailout was initiated by George Bush. Again, these same people weren’t complaining then. They didn’t seem to mind when the candidate they supported spent money like it was going out of style (i.e. irresponsibly) for eight years. So why now?
So, Texas Governor Perry has obviously angry about the direction of our country and is ready to talk about seceding from the Union:
“There’s absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that.”
I guess the overwhelming majority who voted for the Obama administration isn’t the ones getting the the thumb? So, if your in the duly elected minority, the appropriate response is to secede, which is bordering on treason? Maybe he can join up with Chuck Norris and Glenn Beck. I think Chuck has definitely crossed the line. Fortunately, I think everyone knows he’s just a washed up old hack. How does this seem reasonable to anyone? Threatening secession after two months in office? Is this is a democracy or not? You only can win (or be right) if your a neocon Republican?
Oh, that reminds me… hypocrisy… teabagging… I’ll save that for another entry…
Ok… two things… first, nerd humor… second, political humor with a March Madness theme… although, I think whoever made the brackets really screwed up with some of the matchups! (and where is Cheney?)
I never really knew how bad Three Mile Island really was - and how close we were to something so much worse than Chernobyl (which I do know the frightening truth about). Here is an interesting take on the event with TMI’s thirty-year anniversary of the meltdown reminding us the seriousness of technology, quality control, and appropriate processes.
For once, I’m actually showing a clip from Fox News that I like… this may be a first for me (even if the guy in the middle tries to blame it on the current administration when the fascism and totalitarianism was caused by Georgie).
This is right on the heels of finding out that if you are a Ron Paul fan you are likely a possible terrorist. The leaders of our country need to disassemble the DHS and free the people from totalitarian rule that our forefathers struggled so desperately to expel permanently from this land. Before long, DHS = KGB.
Random fun facts and editorials…
Oh, mocking of stupid commercial here and here…
Nice little article on the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of Macs - with references to some really great analysis.
This story is starting to gain momentum on the Interwebs… Jon Stewart vs Jim Cramer. Jon Stewart has called out the fraudsters - called out some of the cheerleaders of the fraudsters (i.e. CNBC). This got the fraudsters friends mad. One of these fraudster friends then threw down the gauntlet at Jon. Jon soundly thrashes Jim with said gauntlet. The culmination is a very telling commentary on the assessment of the current economic crisis, where the blame lies, and the hypocrisy of most of the wildly-conservative leaning press and pundits.
Even if you hate Jon Stewart, this series is really enlightening — I urge you to watch these three unedited snippets of the interview between Jon and Jim. The first is a bit boring but lays out a bit of the backstory of the crisis. The 2nd and 3rd can be painful to watch.
Jon Stewart is the modern generation’s version of Morley Safer, Walter Kronkite or Edward R. Murrow.
I’ve said it before (See Buy a Good Tinfoil Hat and Tinfoil Redux). Beware of cloud-based services, especially when owned by massive corporate behemoths devoid of any true liability. I’m sure I’ll say it many more times in the future…
Haven’t had much to blog about lately, so it was good to find this excellent article to provide fodder for discussion while also dovetailing deeply with my own life and some of my recent commentary. I no longer watch TV. I watch a few shows, which I would just as well download or watch over the Internet than through a broadcast medium at the time I desire rather than some predetermined schedule to force me to watch the news or some other tied in show. Most of my entertainment now is interactive - be it Facebook, Twitter, blogs, or online games. My favorite new “shows” are 5-10 minutes shorts on YouTube or one of the other social video sites - often made by a ragtag group of folks on a shoestring budget - and completely divorced from TV as we currently know it.
Once again, the people in-between the content and the consumers are facing extinction and are doing everything they can to stop it. They are no longer necessary - like the appendix - a vestigial artifact of a past age. The Internet has made them irrelevant. Like any cornered animal fighting for its life, its willing to do about anything to survive… be it nasty DRM or attempts to past protective and draconian legislation - usually at the expense of both the consumer and the content provider. Fortunately, these attempts generally only prolong the inevitable death and rarely disrupt it completely.
A very easy to understand visualization of the economic crisis and how it happened.
Can’t really say it much better than Marc Hedlund at O’Reilly. Content Providers are a bunch of morons. They have customers standing at the cash register waiting to pay for a product - and instead of selling you the product, they would rather treat you like dirt and tell you screw off - the only way you can get it the way you want it is to steal it. That’s smart.
That strategy really has been working for the music industry (not). People don’t want to steal content. They just want to be treated fairly and respected in exchange for their purchase. Look how successful Amazon and iTunes have been - selling non-DRMed content in a way that meets the needs of the customer.
Wake up “content providers” - before we start finding different providers of our content - be it music, TV, movies, or anything else.
My datacenter lost electricity for 6 hours while it received a new circuit breaker box. Sorry for the downtime! I’m sure the world was desperately seeking my pithy remarks and almost came to a halt when my oh so popular URL became a dead, unresponsive, life-draining zombie.
So, I haven’t blogged in a week. Been too busy programming and reading about programming. I had truly forgotten how much I enjoy it. Have a feeling this trend will continue until I finish a major work project that has kept me busy since Christmas.
Not much new otherwise… been playing with Facebook - trying to decide if I like it or if I want to run screaming into the night. Twitter seems temporal. IM definitely is. My blog seems like my home (and I own it). Facebook seems like a spy-camera on my life and social networks for which I don’t truly own any of the content nor which I maintain any true control over its dissemination. Between not reasonably being able to control my “friends” list without being a jerk, or Facebooks horrible TOS and privacy agreement, part of me wants to defriend everyone and delete my account (which is seemingly near impossible). On the other hand, it’s the only way I know of to keep up with some friends and family (until I can get them all on IM, Twitter, etc).
Just spent $1700 to get my (paid off) 1998 Honda Accord fixed up to pass yearly inspection. The parts I just put into it might be worth more than the actual resale value of the car. Of course, to me, this car is worth much more than that… it’s worth $500 x 12 months. So, $1700 isn’t too bad. Now, if I can only get another 160,000 miles out of it.
Finally, while the “datacenter” was powerless, I read about half of The Shack
UPDATE: The Facebook Fiasco has made the New York Times…
UPDATE TWO: Ok. It’s confirmed. Facebook is evil. The other social networks aren’t pulling this kinda crap. My advice. Do not upload anything to Facebook until this is remedied.
Just finally caught up with BSG by watching the last three episodes in succession. Holy crap. Best TV ever. Best TV ever…
In my new WoW-clean state, I’ve been slurping up books right and left. Years ago, before the distractions of WoW and babies and such, I tried to read at least one if not a couple technical books a month. This was a fairly expensive (but necessary) proposition at nearly $50 a pop. I also reviewed development books for a couple companies — usually one every other month (which I got paid for - helping to offset the cost of my monthly book purchases). Of course, six months later a new edition would come out or the book would become stale, often earning it a trip to Goodwill. After skipping the technical reading ritual for a couple years, I think I’m getting back into the groove.