The Blog of Harald

A “mesmerizing animated gif”:http://boardgamegeek.com/bggavatars/avatar_1083617851.jpg for your enjoyment…

(via “defective yeti”:http://www.defectiveyeti.com/archives/000929.html)

Wow; the “ultimate messy computer desk”:http://bash.org/mess/accepted/382128_PinkFuzzyBunny! My Ivar isn’t nearly as bad!

On the other hand, I do have friends whose desks are almost this messy! I wish I had known the contest was running; I would have taken a picture of my father-in-law’s office…

(Click on the arrows to see the rest of the collection of messy desks :)

In the People With Too Much Time On Their Hands Category, We have GPS Drawing and the new, more challenging, “GPS Drawing in the air”:http://www.gpsdrawing.com/gallery/air/wingfest.htm.

I almost peed myself laughing while reading “On The Ball”:http://www.defectiveyeti.com/archives/000920.html over at “defective yeti”:http://www.defectiveyeti.com/.

bq. One moment we’re merrily boinging up and down, the next we’re laying there with dazed looks on our faces, I sprawled cockeyed against the wall, The Squirrelly several feet away on his back, looking like two guys waking up on the morning after a particularly enjoyable bachelor party.

The makers of “T-Shirt Hell”:http://www.tshirthell.com/ have now brought us “Wrap Hell”:http://www.tshirthell.com/wraphell.shtml.

There are people I would give this stuff to… :-)

Just in case you ever wanted to know, “The Straight Dope”:http://www.straightdope.com/ brings us:

When the zombies take over, how long till the electricity fails?

bq. How long the power supply would last in the most critical zombie situation depends on two key factors %u2013 first, how long a given power plant can operate without human intervention, and second, how long before enough power plants fail to bring down the entire transmission grid. I’ll ignore the side issues of whether the zombies would want to try to run the power plant themselves, or if they would be a union or non-union shop.

(If you’re lazy, the answer appears to be that:

bq. within 4-6 hours there would be scattered blackouts and brownouts in numerous areas, within 12 hours much of the system would be unstable, and within 24 hours most portions of the United States and Canada, aside from a rare island of service in a rural area near a hydroelectric source, would be without power. Some installations served by wind farms and solar might continue, but they would be very small. By the end of a week, I’d be surprised if more than a few abandoned sites were still supplying power.

Ok, everone else is linking to the new Apple AirPort Express, but I will too because it really is a neat gadget. It’s not just a wireless stereo connection, or a wireless printer connection, or a wireless base station; it’s all three in one. Not only that, but it will also automatically build a mesh network with another Airport Express or Airport Extreme, either to extend the range of your existing wireless, or just to avoid stringing ethernet cables around.

Cool…

Nelson’s Weblog: guestblog / marc / movie-theaters

bq. It would certainly be cheaper to buy the movie on DVD and own it forever, than to watch it once for nearly twice the price; the popcorn would be better, cheaper, and faster, and could be topped with real butter instead of “topping”; the water would be tastier, colder, and available for $1.49 per 100 cubic feet; and the talking would be sanctioned or actionable. Plus, no ads. It’s no wonder home theater is booming.

Agreed.

There’s a chain up here (Rainbow Cinemas) that is cheaper, but it still makes our family-of-four trip to see Shrek 2, for example, well over $40 by the time you add popcorn and drinks…

This could be interesting reading… Meta Efficient: A Guide To the Most Efficient Things in the World (and an “RSS Feed”:http://www.reactual.com/index.xml is available!)

I’m currently using “Whisper”:http://www.whisper.cx/ for the static content around here, but I tripped over “EditThisPage”:http://editthispagephp.sourceforge.net/home/index.php the other day, and it looks useful also.

More and more of these things are cropping up, probably as a backlash against how complicated (and fragmented!) the Wiki space is getting…

EditThisPagePHP

ComputerZen.com – Scott Hanselman’s Weblog – Will ANYTHING new ever work?

bq. There is a subtle (as a brick in the face) difference between “It just works” and “I got it to work.”

When I think about it, I realize how much this applies to the things I do on a day-to-day basis. Certainly most things in my life “just work”; cars, telephones (but not cell phones), kitchen stuff, light switches, hot water heater, laundry, furnace, and on and on. (Can you imagine what life would be like if they didn’t?)

And then there are computers (and other bits of computerised technology, like VCRs), where sometimes things “just work”, and sometimes “I got it to work”, and sometimes “I threw it out the window in disgust”. I’m often surprised by items in all three categories; sometimes things I expect will require a hammer and a lot of elbow grease “just work”, and (frustratingly) sometimes the opposite.

Where I work, we try very hard to make software that works, and yet are continually surprised by the bizarre things people do with their configurations before they call and complain. Reliability in the face of unexpected problems with computers and networks is one thing; reliability in the face of determined administrators is another thing entirely.

Anyway, I’m not sure where I’m going with this, so I’ll stop. Go read Scott’s article; I think it is interesting.

For those of you looking to maximize (or minimize) your caffeine consumption, CTV news presents caffeine concentrations in Canadian coffee:

|_. Brand |_. Caffeine mg/100 ml |
| Second Cup | 66.0 |
| Starbuck’s | 63.4 |
| Timothy’s | 45.9 |
| Tim Horton’s | 45.5 |
| Country Style | 39.2 |

(via “CTV News”:http://www.ctv.ca/generic/WebSpecials/coffee/main_frameset.html)

Health Canada’s maximum recommended daily intake of caffeine is 400mg, which is approximately _one_ 20oz cup of coffee from Starbuck’s or Second Cup.

Another recent study (I’ll see if I can find the link) showed that caffeine works better, and has fewer side effects, if it is given in low doses throughout the day, rather than as large doses (such as from a 20oz cup during your morning commute).

Conclusions are left as an exercise for the reader :-)

Don Park’s Daily Habit – Losing It

bq. I wrote two posts today but trashed them both because I didn’t want to bother with the backlash.

Sounds familiar…

[ Ok, I’ve re-written this about a zillion times now… ]

First off, I would like to thank Six Apart for making some cool software and giving it away for free. Somewhere in all of this frenzy of Movable Type rhetoric, I forgot about that…

As usual, “Chuqui captures my feelings on MT 3.0”:http://www.plaidworks.com/chuqui/blog/001474.html:

bq. But — those of us who are fairly simple blog users, but who don’t want to host at TypePad, don’t fit into their new model well. Since I want to continue to self-host my blog, TypePad’s not an option. Since there are two of us at Plaidworks blogging, I don’t qualify for the free license.

and in “another essay”:http://www.plaidworks.com/chuqui/blog/001475.html:

bq. the new licensing terms indicated to me that Six Apart doesn’t know how its users are using the product.

I’m not in “Six Apart’s”:http://www.sixapart.com/ target market either. cfrq.net is a hobby for me, and a low-cost one at that. I’m not willing to spend a lot of money on it; I simply have other higher priority demands on my cash. We run this place as a “virtual co-op”:http://www.net-co-op.org/:

* the server upgrade was sponsored by “Greg Wilson”:http://www.third-bit.com/~gvwilson/ (and third-bit.com)
* the machine lives at a friend’s office (it used to live at mine, but my new employer doesn’t allow that sort of thing :-)
* the bandwidth is “excess” bandwidth from their Internet connection, and we’re careful to keep our usage low and our host secure, staying off the corporate radar.
* I sysadmin the site in my spare time (because I enjoy it), and some of the others help with specific applications when I don’t have the time.

So what are my options with Six Apart?

* A “TypePad account”:http://www.typepad.com/site/features/ is at least $60 (US) per year. That’s a good price for what they’re offering, but I _like_ hosting my own applications; I don’t _want_ to pay someone else to do it, never mind the cost / convenience ratio.
* A “MoveableType 3.0 license”:http://secure.sixapart.com/ for cfrq.net would be more than $190 (US), thanks to the multi-author “RoleMaster Game Log”:http://www.cfrq.net/~rolemaster/. My weblogs just aren’t important enough for me to spend that much money!
* My users could each install their own Movable Type (either Free or Personal licenses), but I apparently can’t do it for them, and we’d all have to have separate copies (so we can’t share plugins as easily, for example).

Do I feel betrayed? Nah. Am I one of those people who doesn’t want to pay for things? No; I’ve purchased lots of good software over the years (examples from recent memory include Desktop To Go, HanDBase, the Nelson Email Organiser…). Although I’m embarassed to admit that I intended to donate to Movable Type, but never got around to it. Anyway, for me it’s simple on two axes:

* I don’t want to spend _that much_ money on weblogging.
* There are options that are just as good (for me) that are free (speech _and_ beer), including staying with MT 2.6 (modulo the comment spam problem).

Anyway, while browsing around I found a couple of other comments that I liked:

bq. it seems that they’ve screwed up one of the most basic rules in pricing: never take away features and charge for them. You can charge for new features – but taking away features that were included for free before always pisses off your most loyal customers. They feel suckered. They feel like you’ve pulled a bait and switch on them. In this case, many MT users set up multiple blogs with multiple authors. That’s what the software encouraged them to do. Now, they’re looking at the pricing and realizing to continue doing so on the new platform would cost them around $600. “Costs more for doing less” isn’t a way to make users happy.

(via “TechDirt”:http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20040513/183228_F.shtml)

bq. You can’t be a software company and a service company under one roof, for you will inevitably end up competing with your customers.

( via “Jeff Jarvis”:http://www.buzzmachine.com/archives/2004_05_15.html#007062)

I have opinions on the whole exceptions debate, but nothing earth shattering (and nothing that hasn’t been expressed elswhere. But I had to laugh at “this particular snippet”:http://six-fourteen.blogspot.com/#106642385892403242

bq. Fortunately for me I mostly ignore exceptions because I don’t really give a damn how well my software works – just that I get paid (and quick!).

I have days like that…

ongoing – On Digicams

bq. The digital-camera world is in motion and there’s a lot of interesting stuff out there to read. Herewith a quick summary of the state of play, with pointers.

A short but interesting read:

Common Craft – Online Community Strategies: Wiki and the Perfect Camping Trip

bq. This entry should provide an easy-to-understand (but fictional) example of a wiki at work for people new to the technology/concept.

bq. I’ve used about 20 operating systems in my career and written two. I’ve programmed in over 40 languages. I’ve tasted about 75 flavors of ice cream. Limiting me to one of each would be a pity.

“Dr. Eugene “Spaf” Spafford”:http://www.cerias.purdue.edu/homes/spaf/ in “Spaf on Legislating Technology, Congressional Testimonies, and Info Security”:http://grep.law.harvard.edu/article.pl?sid=04/04/05/0353235 on “Greplaw”:http://grep.law.harvard.edu/.

The New York Times contains an essay titled “Diversity’s False Solace”:http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/11/magazine/11ESSAY.html?ei=5007&en=3bef5db5e7b21145&ex=1397016000&partner=USERLAND&pagewanted=print (registration required).

I loved these quotes:

bq. the reason we like the problem of racism is that solving it just requires us to give up our prejudices, whereas solving the problem of economic inequality might require something more — it might require us to give up our money.

bq. When student and faculty activists struggle for cultural diversity, they are in large part battling over what skin color the rich kids should have. […] As long as we think that our best universities are fair if they are appropriately diverse, we don’t have to worry that most people can’t go to them.

“Billy Joel: We didn’t start the fire”:http://uploader.wuerzburg.de/gym-fkg/schule/fachber/englisch/joel/songtext.html Annotated.

On the one hand, I’m kinda embarrassed about the number of references I didn’t get. On the other hand, four of the five verses mention events that occurred before I was born :-)