November 2007 Archives

I cannot believe it has taken this long for me to figure this out:

Multiple identities in one account with Apple Mail.app (link)

I work with an average of five different email accounts to separate work from personal from junk. Essentially, all of the email addresses I use pour into one single account except for those associated with email lists (because of the sheer bulk of messages I would receive and can't process). The problem is that I thought Apple's Mail.app didn't have an easy way of sending from these "identities" unless you added the identity as another mail account. Not true. If you follow the instructions in the above link, all you have to do is take the one account you wish to change and add every email address (i.e. identity) you want to send from in a comma separated list in the Email Address field where you set up your account. I know this works on OS X 10.4 (aka Tiger) and will test on 10.5 (aka Leopard) later. Props to Jonathan for finding this very simple solution.

I'm finally back to using the ThinkPad x40 for general use and testing purposes. This is a machine I bought some years back because it was the one most of the OpenBSD developers had been providing a great deal of support for. It has been a fantastic little machine in a number of respects. It has a great keyboard for long work hours (although, if left plugged in and compiling software through the ports, it sometimes gets a bit warm) and the battery lasts forever. I use the extended battery (which I have been chastised for, as it somewhat defeats the light weight and small size of the machine without the extended battery) and have been able to go more than six hours without plugging in.

There are plenty of issues I have running OpenBSD in comparison with OS X on my MacBook Pro. I won't be leaving the MacBook any time soon, as I depend heavily upon programs like Photoshop, iTunes, iMovie, iDVD, .Mac, integration with my iPhone and Blackberry, Aperture, Final Cut, etc. I just can't see how to make some of the relatively easy multimedia stuff work the way I want on OpenBSD. It just isn't worth the time for me. Yet. I imagine there will come a day when the locked-in-I-got-you-by-the-nads nature of software licensing will irk me enough to work to make other applications work. It is frustrating, however, because what are seemingly simple issues - like connectivity to PDAs - aren't. That is, the developers of hardware such as PDAs do not necessarily follow any type of standards and when you want to connect for syncing data, a lot of hacking has to happen to make it work. I don't even want to get into the multimedia - like HD video and RAW photos - side of things. So, on one hand, you sell your soul to the guy who requires you sign an EULA that is ridiculous and completely incomprehensible or, you get what you can be assured is *free* to use as you please, but is limited in areas where you want to manipulate data. A prime example, besides the multimedia content, remains business and Microsoft Word or Excel. There are so many documents we will receive from customers that have some type of proprietary (proprietary to Microsoft, that is) formatting, the it make using OpenOffice (which isn't all that open) or some type of BSD style licensed replacement not all that viable. This is simply a reality of doing business and it is not realistic for me to refuse documents that don't follow a certain format when the end user sending them to me has no clue what they are doing.

Right now, the only problem I'm running into is that the package snapshots have not caught up yet to the system snapshot I'm using and I'm stuck building a lot of applications from the ports. I am going to take the dive and experiment a bit with gimp and see how it fares with some of my photo stuff. As far as music goes, I'm less attached to iTunes than I was before. I stopped buying DRMed songs and rely more on our Sonos system at home than carrying around a lot of you-are-locked-into-iTunes music. (It turns out that purchasing used CDs through djangos.com is actually cheaper than buying an inferiorly encoded mp3 or aac track from a CD. In other words, I rip the way I please and depending upon the music itself, sometimes a higher bitrate doesn't make sense.)

If curious or interested, I've update the dmesg output and my xorg.conf file here (dmesg) and here (xorg.conf). I haven't been able to get flash on YouTube or other sites that require it to work properly, but until I get gaim and konquerer installed, I won't put much time into that.

One note for the archives: if you want Opera to work properly, you must set 'sysctl kern.emul.linux=1', otherwise, Opera will give out an obscure 'cannot run' error. I know I had this problem last time I ran Opera on the x40, but I never made any note of it, so I couldn't remember what the solution is.

Matt and I are still involved in the data center business even though we've been hit time and time again with large customers walking out on significant bills. The hardest part about the business is getting paid after-the-fact. Companies have been great in signing up for our service(s) and the marriage is happy for at least a few months. They love us and the service, we love them and their quick payment routine. The problem with not only providing space and access to bandwidth, but application support is that even if an application has proven to be buggy (and we are *not* responsible for the complete design of the application), we somehow carry fault for problems - especially if it is found that as one problem gets fixed, another crops up.

As a small example, a web server typically has some limit to the amount of requests it can handle in a certain amount of time. The complexity of measuring this variable grows exponentially as the way requests are handed off to the web server take place and how long a given user of a website sticks around. So, the stickiness of the user - i.e. length of time on the site - and the way you set up a timeout for the server to say that it does not need the connection to the user to exist is difficult to measure. Well, if you've designed an application that we assist in managing and this becomes an issue, there are no straight-forward answers to why a server would lock up or connections are not timing out quickly or slowly enough. The process of finding a happy medium is relatively easy if traffic remains static, but not if it continually fluctuates and grows. As time goes on, instead of working with us to resolve these sorts of problems and realizing that a lot of work is required to find a solution, people start wondering whether or not we know what we're doing. The answer is usually, yes, we do. Execution isn't always perfect, but we are good at solving problems. It is difficult, however, to tell someone that their program/application design is root of the problem (or it is simply *the way things work* when traffic grows) when they are your customer and the solution is going to require time (and, of course, money) and experimentation to solve.

Friday, we ran into a completely different problem. One mostly of our own making. A good customer decided to do a major upgrade to his server (he is a bit of a unique customer in that he is neither a co-location customer, nor a managed server customer; he manages his own server, but we provide the hardware, electricity, heating/cooling and bandwidth to him) and something went awry. Both Matt and I have big families and Thanksgiving is the one time of year that everyone gets together to celebrate. Not only do we see our relatives on Thursday, but throughout the weekend. To top it off, most of the people with whom we work are in the same situation.

The first problem we found was that the lights out management (LOM) on his server was not properly configured (either the server had never been correctly configured to begin with or somehow during the reboot the LOM lost its configuration during the reboot (highly unlikely, but still possible). This meant that without physical access to the machine (which we did not have because both of us were 300 mi. away from the data center), we would need to call in someone to reconfigure the LOM.

This is where the second, and most critical, problem "cropped" up. The data center where we lease space didn't have anyone in house. Let that sink in a moment. We lease floor space from a data center where there are a few other customers like ourselves (the data center provides electricity, heating/cooling, bandwidth and security - and we thought a person to help with basic issues in case it was needed). They have racks and racks of their own equipment that they monitor and manage. No one was in house. Matt learned that they had someone on call who would be in later that evening to do normal maintenance. We had the option of calling it an emergency and having someone come in specially for us and our customer or we could wait until their employee comes in for the normal checkups. We talk to the customer and find out that waiting is ok.

By the time the LOM on the machine is fixed, the customer has been down for the good part of seven hours. I'm not ok with this, but things happen and this is one of those rare times where our reaction time was much worse than expected. We would make changes to deal with this type of problem so it didn't happen again. (I had also called another gentlemen who had helped us in the past, but he wasn't willing to come in and help. That is another story in it of itself, but I won't go into the details.) Matt was contacted an hour or so later by our customer and told that the LOM settings had been lost again. The guy who had been at the data center was again gone and the next visit was going to be 11 am the next day.

What to do...

I doubt the customer was happy, but it was left at that. I expected that by 11:30 am we would be back on the server and this time, I would look around and try to gauge what was going on. (We weren't sure, but thought that the boot record and partition table of the server had been wiped and were wondering what could have possibly caused that condition. Usually, in this situation, you are happy you make backups and commence in rebuilding.) I also wanted to see what state the machine was in so that in case there were any questions, I could do my best to answer them. 11:45 am rolls around and I didn't hear anything from Matt about the LOM being reconfigured. I contact him and we start to get frantic and wonder why the data center personnel are not responding to the request. It was only around 12:30 where we realize no one had yet made it in to do the work. No one was responding to pages, emails or phone calls. Shortly thereafter, we get a message that there is a guy working on it and he can't figure out what to do. At that point, I start to get irritated. This isn't the service I expect for our customers, nor is it the type of situation I would have ever envisioned us being in considering where our data center is and who they are. This LOM setup is simple stuff.

I finally write Matt and say that I felt we had two options: a) we (one or both of us) forego family festivities and drive up to Minneapolis and do the work ourselves or b) we tell the customer that he has two options, we give him another server or if he cannot accept that, he will have to wait for Matt to arrive in Minneapolis Sunday evening (today) to work on things himself. I wasn't going to make the customer go through any more bullshit. Obviously, the idea that our data center is staffed 24/7 is fiction. Just to see which way we might have to go, I IM the customer and ask about using a different server for the time being - one from a customer who had recently shut down operations. He says that he wants access to the data on his server. I took that to mean he wasn't going to accept the "backup" server. Although I thought it was unlikely that he was going to get anything back (because it looked like the hard drive on the server had been repartitioned from what little Matt saw the night before), it was a fair request and I was facing the idea of driving 10 hours to figure out a problem that I knew had to be simple. What a waste of time when we should have a way to deal with a problem like this other than having to be there ourselves...

Matt takes a leap of faith, however, and calls a co-location customer who is very, very familiar with our equipment and asks if he can help. He was in Minneapolis for the holiday anyway and just might understand what type of bind we were in. In the mean time, I was looking at flight possibilities so I wouldn't necessarily have to drive. In the middle of researching flights, our other customer says yes, he can go in to help. Yes, we called another customer for help. He seems to be happy to go in and it was at that point that I started to breath a little easier. I had never met this customer directly, but from talking to Matt, he seemed like the kind of person you could trust to stick around until the problem was solved. He understood what type of bind we had found ourselves in. I could plan on seeing family again and Matt could go about their plans also. Neither of us would be stuck in my car or on a plane bitching about who should have had better plans or why we want to get out of this business.

I won't get into the details that follow. Matt and I did a number of tests with rebooting the server before handing it off to the customer again. We wanted to be absolutely sure the LOM didn't lose its configuration again. Within an hour or so, it appears that the customer was back up and running (his blog details how he did it anyway). After over 24 -- more than twenty-four -- hours.

While I think I can objectively say that customer could have been more cautious about the upgrade and made sure backups would be ready to go on another server if needed, but we were solely to blame for the ridiculous amount of time it took to solve the problem. Where in the hell were the people needed to get their hands on the server and why weren't people at the data center 24/7? At this point I don't care why. The fact is that they aren't. We got caught with our pants down. It's cold in Minneapolis this time of year and no pants on has frightening effects.

We have a few options from hereon in. One is that we no longer claim we can service equipment 24/7. It is a valid option, but not very appetizing to people who are looking for co-location and or application hosting. Another option is to move our equipment to a data center where we are sure they offer 24/7 staffed support. The last option is to have two people on call whenever we are not physically available ourselves. The reality is that we're not moving. It would take too much time and cost too much money and we would be better off closing down our service if we had to do so. I don't think we can run a viable business on a 9-to-5 schedule either. So, we need to put people on call; not one person, but two (a backup to a backup). We thought we had people on call vis a vis the data center and found we didn't. This is the worst way to find out.

It isn't just a matter of having a plan. It is also important to test that plan. We won't make the same mistake again.

I have read some very good (p)reviews on Amazon's new Kindle eBook device. The two comments that most succinctly explain why it is going to fail are from Jeff Jarvis (link Kindle?) and Mark Pilgrim (link A Future of Reading (A Play in Six Acts)). Jeff comments:

"I was approached to add BuzzMachine to the blog available for sale on the device but didn’t pursue it because I don’t see the sense in selling this blog when it’s available on the web for free. Oh, I’d love to think that I could sell it — nothing against money; though I’m often accused of it, I’m not arguing that content should be free but that it just is. But if this content is available here for free, why would and should someone buy it on a different device? Why shouldn’t that device just bring me the internet? The iPhone does."

Mark goes much, much deeper in philosophically pulling apart and evaluating all of the practical, legal and usability-related, reasons why the Kindle will fail. I believe Mark's arguments carry the greatest weight because in the end, people will decide that the locked-in nature of the Kindle will make them endure pain and suffering at the hand of Amazon that they would have avoided had they a) refused to buy the product and b) understood that Amazon has them by the proverbial 'nads if they decide to turn off the service. Mark references a portion of the Kindle Terms of Service:

"Your rights under this Agreement will automatically terminate without notice from Amazon if you fail to comply with any term of this Agreement. In case of such termination, you must cease all use of the Software and Amazon may immediately revoke your access to the Service or to Digital Content without notice to you and without refund of any fees."

I will add my own reservations. First off, however, I feel that there are too many commentaries out there relating to the device itself from people who haven't had it in their own hands. I'll wait to reserve judgement for the design aspects of the device until I get mine next week. (The 80's called and want their punk hairdo and beige brick based computers back.) At least Jeff and Mark are attacking it on the basis of philosophical ideology and this is why I respect their comments.

The Kindle will fail for me because I won't be able to use it outside of the US, nor in those many remote areas where Sprint's network does not offer coverage. The benefit of the device to someone like me is that I can use it to store books on the go. I've tried this in many forms and it has failed because the form-factor of the devices I've been dependent upon leave much to be desired, re Sony UX90 (not the PDA, but the mini laptop), HTC Advantage and many tablet PCs, including my favorite, the IBM ThinkPad X41 (now Lenovo). They are too heavy or do not fit well into your hand when reading in bed or on a beach chair. This makes is a big deal because part of the reason why the smallish paperbacks do so well is that their are easy to transport and relatively easy to hold while reading in awkward positions. In this sense, the Kindle will actually win our over the alternative if it actually is easy to hold. 10 oz. (284 g) is not that lightweight, yet doesn't compare to the 1.5+lbs. (680+ g) I am referring to above. In my opinion, if the Nokia N810 that just arrived had the ability to display eBooks from Amazon, eBooks.com, Mobipocket, etc., we would actually have a fantastic alternative. It isn't nearly as heavy as the other devices I've mentioned and the screen is better to view than the HTC Advantage.

Back to my above point: I want access to multiple books while on the road and in odd places where I really don't want to lug around a duffle bag full of books (that's why I started carrying my laptop and rely a lot these days on scanned documents and RSS feeds of sites I regularly visit) - and as Jeff mentions, this is why the iPhone is so damn powerful. In many ways, it can replace my laptop because of its digital document viewing abilities. (It is lacking in many other areas, but I won't pursue that here.) The Kindle won't have access to the "network" while I'm in Germany, nor will it work in the back woods of northern Wisconsin or the many other areas of the US that don't have adequate/good EVDO coverage from Sprint. I will have paid $400 for a device that won't work just when I need it.

The biggest issue is even simpler, however. When the lights go out - either for the device or Amazon (and they will some day - either for the service itself or DRM management that goes with this device) - I will no longer have access to all of the content I legitimately paid for. This is bad, bad, bad. In many respects, this is where Amazon is doing something ass-backwards and why this is no comparison to the iPod. With the original iPod, before the iTunes Music Store, we could take music we already owned and transfer it to the device. (With the iTunes Music Store this became much easier in that I just had to click, buy, download, and listen.) We weren't tied into whether or not a producer of the content allowed this (the RIAA and certain people still feel it is wrong for me to take content I already paid for and transfer it to a more convenient medium - but that's a different story, too, that I won't delve into), we were just able to do as we pleased. It was only after the success of this that the DRM based service (which is slowly moving towards a DRM-less service) came into existence. In the case of the Kindle, you have DRM and lock-me-to-your-whims first and someday, if we're lucky (HA!), we'll be allowed access to this wonderful content without DRM. Ass backwards, I say. I can't even view a friggin' PDF!

So what is so wrong with me that I'm still going to pay for this wasteful electronic brick? I can't find a better alternative. Period. I am willing to double spend on books. Period. Wasteful in the financial sense? Yes. Convenient for me in the short run (right when I need it)? Yes. The only two things that will make me send it back are readability issues (is the book I bought readable or not) and weight (can I use it while lying in bed). I learned when I first started buying eBooks that if I want control over what I've purchased, I'll simply have to purchase the physical item, too. There are many a book that I could care less whether or not I ever see them again and like a physical newspaper, they end up lining the bottom of a bird cage or go in the fire.* Those that I want to collect and hold onto are bought in physical form at the same time I purchase the electronic version. My experience with MobiPocket disappearing some months back was a reminder as to why I do this. Hopefully my money won't be blown entirely out the window and some of it will actually go to the author's whose work I am double purchasing. Hopefully the money Amazon receives from this will help develop the real iPod of the digital book world. This certainly isn't it and because of my feelings (despite what my actions may indicate to some) I hope to make clear to Amazon, as a paying customer, that this will fail unless they make radical changes to what they have introduced, legally and philosophically.

I look at the Kindle as a very short term solution to a long term problem that will only be solved by removing DRM from eBooks altogether. Lawrence Lessig has done it and perhaps, while not as "rich" as he might have been had he not copyrighted his works under a Creative Commons license, it worked and his book has actually sold (perhaps CC isn't the only way to go, but he definitely is on to something). Radiohead has proven we aren't all leeches and put value in the things we see others work hard to produce. Intellectual property simply isn't the same as physical property and the rules we apply to it can't be shoehorned into that market. The failure in DRM to work and satisfy people's needs/buying habits is proof of this.

One other point before I sign off: I understand the costs Amazon is applying to newspapers and blogs. That didn't come out right... I understand why they are charging to read that additional content. They are going to owe Sprint money for the bandwidth they use. I can't see any other way around this dilemma and one thing is for sure: had this been another subscription based service, I wouldn't have even thought about biting. I think the limitations as to which blogs and newspapers are available (and the pricing of some of the newspapers is ridiculous - $14/mo for FaZ that is free online???? Maybe $5... maybe...) are going to hinder the popularity of this device too. I could care less that TechCrunch agreed to allow it's content to be sold to Kindle users. I care that I'm limited to it and whatever the other chosen ones are and are going to be. So, although the Kindle potentially offers a fantastic platform to revive the art of printed materials (e.g. books), they are blowing it on access to weblogs, online newspapers, magazines, etc. RSS and free access to it is where the market is headed. You can't get me, the overspending idiot consumer I am, to shell out another $20+/mo to receive access to what is FREE on another device! So, I understand. Again, execution thereof, ass backwards. I'll stick to using it for books. If it fails at that, Amazon has wasted a lot of time and money.

It is so ironic. The roadmap as to what makes a successful digital product is there. The iPod is only one stellar example (even with its limitations). All you have to do is copy it. Obviously the publishing industry doesn't believe this and Amazon didn't use its clout to make it happen. So sad for the average consumer.

*No, I don't actually throw books away or burn them. Some of the science fiction trash I read, however, isn't worth wasting the gas on driving it over to the local Goodwill store, so unless someone comes over and takes it from my house, the book usually sits in the basement, rotting.

I really want to understand what is going on when I fiddle with f/stops, increasing depth of field, but further limiting the amount of light that hits the film or sensor. I also was having a difficult time understanding the concept of focal length considering that a lens labeled as 300mm, isn't necessarily 300mm long. Somehow, this afternoon, I stumbled across A Tedious Explanation of the f/stop. What a godsend. For issues with depth of field (which has been hitting below the belt on a lot of my pictures) and speed of the exposure (heavily impacting the clarity of my pictures), Matthew explains:

"You need to know the doubling/halving relationship and how it works with shutter speeds in exposure. This is key since the shutter speeds and f/stops you choose have implications in how your final photograph will look in ways other than purely the amount of light on the film. You need to know that as you stop down you get more depth of field. You do not need to go around calculating aperture areas for your lenses and f/stops. If you're like me, it's worth doing it once to see that it works, then forgetting about."

Thank you, Matthew, for taking the time to write down your notes. After a third read, I think I finally get what I'm doing wrong and now know how to clear up many of the problems I've had.

For most, the issue with general warming of populated areas and the environment in general is a closed issue. You would think with all the scientific postulating going on, one would at least be open to debate. We debate everything except when people invoke think about future generations ad hoc arguments. Once I get permission, I'll post a graph I found intriguing. For now, here is a link of interest:

Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide

An interesting observation that I may one day delve further into: Heliocentrism is the work of many men, but one made it popular against all odds by one. In his time, Copernicus faced the abuse of the Church and colleagues who couldn't admit or concede he was correct.
Much of the scientifically backed commentary being thrown about today - whether dealing with the earth's temperatures or economics - are full of voodoo theories and emotional conjecture. Much like Copernicus experienced, the momentum was against him. Even in today's age of science, we continue to choose theories that defy statistics, logic and a simple principle known as Ockham's Razor. For some reason, like in certain areas of religious dogma, we wish to hold to theories regardless of their consequences or reliability.
Copernicus, Galileo and men like them are heros. We could learn from them (again).

Yes, two exclamation marks to begin a weblog entry. Today I learned something important about myself:

I'm exceptionally good at compounding errors with thoughtlessness.

No one had to tell me that. I learned it all on my own. I realized that I was capable of this feat when I had to create journal entry corrections for an error three times over. What does that mean? Well, when balancing the end of month books for work, I made a simple error. To correct this accounting error, I tried to fix the error with an entry to the general ledger. This led to another error. When I fixed that error, I realized I inadvertently made another. I followed this up with a mistake... not an error, but a mistake. After much irritation, I sat down, took a few breaths, wrote another journal entry and corrected the error and the mistake. What is the difference between an error and a mistake, you ask? It's my secret. Plus, I couldn't have possibly made four errors in a row!
After double checking what I did, I thought about it and gave myself a small lecture as to why I should slow down and pay attention to what I'm doing. Then a little voice went off in my head shining a positive light on what I did. I was exceptionally good at making those errors (and the lone mistake). That's when I realized that I have a talent I would wager few others have. I'm good at compounding... errors. (Oh, and wasting an hour with the snap of a finger.)

I think the keyboard one uses (i.e. the one built into the laptop you work on or the one you attach to your machine at home or office) has a big effect on how you use your machine. I find that if I don't have access to my [personal] environment, I'm less likely to do the things I normally take time to go through. I buy a new keyboard every six months because I never feel comfortable with the one I'm using for longer than that. I'm always in search of that end-all-be-all device that brings me back to those memorable ThinkPad 770ED days. That was the first laptop I had that I loved to type on. (It was far from the first laptop I've ever had, but was the first for me where the pointing and typing devices were exactly what my hands called for. The tactile feedback, key size and location were all just right.) I wrote volumes with that machine and even though laptop keyboards have a tendency to be cramped, I really enjoyed using the 770. (In fact, there lies a completely dead shell of a 770ED on a shelf in my office - for posterity's sake.)

I happened to be at the Mayfair Mall Apple Store in Wauwatosa, WI (dropping off a new, but dead Mac Pro) and saw that they had the new Apple wireless keyboards (small, laptop-like, bluetooth devices). Other than the built in, back-lit keyboard on my MacBook Pro, I usually don't like Apple keyboards - and especially not their mice. I was drawn to the new keyboard, however, because of the size, and thought, “what the hell...” I have a $100 in-store credit for my “early adopter iPhone purchase” and wanted to see what it was like.
After opening up the packaging and registering the keyboard with my laptop, I started typing. Oh wow. Yeah... really... wow. It was like being transported back to the days of typing research papers on the 770. There are a few very basic characteristics I like about the wireless keyboard: tactile feedback, key size, key spacing and over-all layout/location of the keys. I can't tell you why the spacing works so well for me. I love the old IBM click! keyboards, which make this one look like a midget. While I comment that I like the over-all size, that is a bit misleading, because I like bigger keyboards, too. I think most heavy computer users would find it troublesome to explain what they like and don't like about their favorite keyboard, except when it comes to tactile feedback. The responsiveness of a key depression is the single most irritating factor in explaining why a keyboard sucks. I think I'm in the slight majority when I say: squishy keyboards suck. Perhaps I should come up with a better phrase than “suck,” but that word sums it up. They suck the life out of your hands when you type on them. This is a point where this keyboard (ironically) excels and beats my expectations. When you press a key, you know it. It isn't loud and doesn't yell HEY THERE! like the click! keyboards, but you know that you've typed a key after depressing it.
Of all wireless keyboards I've used over the past four or five years, this one has been the most responsive and easy to manage. When I sat down to write a short recommendation to buy the keyboard, I thought, how ridiculous... a review of a tiny, little keyboard from Apple? Then again, what is it that makes us like our work areas? I think many are like me; part of their desire and ability to get things done is having access to the tools they like using. So, since I spend the better part of my day working on one, why not. I've read lengthy reviews of pens and pencils, why not of a keyboard?
If you're on the fence and don't need number keys (I'm wondering if Apple will consider bringing out a bluetooth number keypad to match) - AND you sometimes like using laptop keyboards - I highly recommend you try this one. If you do go off my recommendation, I'd appreciate a note of what you think after actually using it. I've found this to actually make thinking about typing secondary to doing. That has a tendency to make life a little easier.

I continually forget how to do this (because I usually set it up once and never again), so I'm making a quick note of how to show the shortened hostname, username and current directory at the prompt under ksh (the default shell for OpenBSD). In the standard .profile file, enter:

HOST=`hostname`
export PS1='${USER}@${HOST%%.*} ${PWD##*/} $ '

There are ways to add color, etc. to this, but I like the plain, vanilla look it produces. Finally, I won't be likely to run commands on a machine where I shouldn't be.

   After the last few sporting events I attended (the last of which was the Badgers vs. Wolverines Football game last Saturday) I realized that I did far too little research when I went ahead and purchased the Nikon AF-S Zoom 70-200mm f/2.8 lens. Don't get me wrong, I am far from regretting that purchase. I love everything about the lens and the only problem I ever have is making stupid mistakes with setting the camera incorrectly (i.e. shooting in S mode at a tiny f-stop opening and with the shutter speed far too high). The pictures, when I'm using my brain, are fantastic. The problem is that I am often too far away from the subject to get the type of shot I want. I know that I can zoom and crop to get the same effect, but the reason why I went to a higher resolution body (besides the massive improvements made between the D200 and D100) was to get higher resolution shots because I wanted to be able to crop some without losing quality. The problem is that if you are throwing away 60% of the image due to cropping, it somewhat defeats the purpose of having gotten a camera with greater resolution. (Plus, a quite obvious side effect is that visual quality of the image, once cropped, can be drastically impacted.) The argument could be made that I really don't need to worry about a cropped image for print purposes. This would normally be true. Say I take a 6MB image and crop away half of it (i.e. less than my claimed usual 60%). I am still left with a 3MB image that should suffice for a 4x6" print. (I know the relationship isn't necessarily linear - i.e. that an image cropped 50% is 50% of the original size. Sometimes it is smaller and sometimes it is larger. But for the sake of argument, I'm purposefully using simple numbers.) The problem is that I almost never view my pictures as a 4x6" print these days. Usually, the picture is blown up to a 17-20+" screen, where resolution of the final image actually matters. In the rare case I have made a print, I like them to be on the order of 8x10" to 8.5x11". (My opinion is that you get so little of the photographic effect in a small print for most of what I've been shooting. Plus, bigger is better, right???)

     So, with the above and numerous other arguments in mind, I decided I'm going to find a 300mm+ lens for sports (and some nature). With the appropriate teleconverter, this could easily put me in the 500mm range and I can't think of any items of personal interest that would require a larger lens. With a bit of research, I narrowed it down to a 80-400mm f/4.5-5.6 AF VR lens, a 300mm f/2.8 prime, and a 200-400mm f/4 AF-S VR zoom. The 80-400mm seemed the best in-between lens because of the price (in comparison with the other two quoted lenses). I wasn't all that enthused with the speed (vis a vis the f-stop), but most of what I have a chance to shoot that would require that size lens is under bright lighting. I read somewhere last night, though, that the lens's autofocus can sometimes be irritatingly slow. (I wish I could find the link to the comment I read.) Because I've often found that my immediate needs don't match those of people commenting on the product I'm considering, I wanted to take a look at it myself. Tonight I had the chance to stop by Mike Crivello's in Brookfield and take a look at one first hand. It took me 20 seconds to realize this one wasn't for me. In trying to shoot something as simple as Steffi riding (where I'm relatively aware of future direction and movement and can plan), there is no way the autofocus would be able to keep up with the constantly moving target and changing distance from myself. When switching from an object at 75ft away to one at 50ft, it would take a full second to re-focus. The vibration reduction was fantastic (especially at the longer lengths), but it wouldn't have helped if the photo was completely out of zoom. The long wait to focus didn't occur every time, but enough times for me to realize it wasn't going to cut it. My first 35-70mm zoom AF Nikkor lens I bought off eBay for the D100 has the same issues. That lens is an oldie, but goodie, and I learned to live with it because I couldn't afford anything else, but I also found that because it was difficult (and slow) for me to use, I used it less than had it been a faster focusing lens.

     I realize that some of this may be completely obvious for people with experience out there, but for people like myself, who have little academic understanding of how cameras function and why certain lenses are suited for one thing over another, it is a revelation to learn these things. When you simply can't afford something, your choices are limited. In my current case, I still can't afford the 300mm or 200-400mm zoom, but I know that if I plunked down the money for the 80-400mm (which I can afford now), I would have used it a lot for a little while and then realized I had wasted the money.

     If you are in the market and want to get a few good sports shots (i.e. dressage, football, basketball, soccer, etc.) without taking 1000 pictures (which isn't a bad option if you don't have another choice), then I would recommend staying away from this thing. I'm not certain what someone would use a slow (literally and light-wise) lens like this for, but it won't work for me. I'm better off better learning how to use the 70-200mm and let time be my guide in figuring out which of the two left on the list will become the next lens purchase.

I happened across this device on some tech related weblog (whose name and url I can't remember) and had to give my opinion. I've been using WiebeTech usb/firewire "raw" drive connectors for a few years, but the solution was always a little cumbersome; unless using it in situations where portability is key. Most of the time, I'm not in one of those situations and I have popped a drive out of a machine whose power supply has gone (or some other relatively minor problem has occurred). Now that most of the machines I deal with are SATA, I was looking for a device that made quick, raw hard drive backups (or reads) easy, yet don't clutter my desk like the WiebeTech solutions do. Like I said, I happened across mention of this device and ordered two. The shipping is ridiculous; $50 because it is being shipped from Japan, but I because the cradle is $50, I figured $75 for each cradle wasn't half bad, as long as they worked as promised. (I've found that some caddies/adapters do not perform even close to USB 2.0 specs. One transfered data from a good drive at about 4mbps. Definitely not 480mbps or close to the expected rates of around 350mbps.)
Today is the umpteenth time I've used the cradle, but the first time for an "emergency." I arrived at work this morning with my Mac Pro turned off (I leave it on 24/7 because I access it remotely quite often). I figured the power went out last evening and I went to restart it. Nothing. I fiddled with the power button, unplugged the machine, plugged it into a different electrical outlet, used a different power cord, and ran through a few procedures you use for getting Mac Pros to start if it is a simple memory board problem. Nada. I do regular backups of my two main machines now (a MacBook Pro and the Mac Pro), so I wasn't all that worried... except I had written two letters last night that I needed for work today. I spent quite a bit of time composing them, so I didn't want to go through the trouble all over. After AppleCare Phone support provided more aggravation than help (buy the AppleCare plan and find out you still have to hand deliver a Mac Pro for service and deal with an agent who obviously hasn't listened to any of the attempts I made before calling to revive the machine), I popped open the case, pulled the main drive and plopped it in the cradle. I navigated to my home directory and mounted my FileVault image ('hdid ./.snfettig.sparseimage'; enter password; access files through finder...) and grabbed the two files I needed. Done.
I can say that from the numerous backups I've pulled off drives with this cradle, I'm extremely happy with the performance and size. The fact that it will accept both 3.5" and 2.5" drives makes it all the more convenient. If you're a tech who uses drive caddies for any reason - and find that you have a lot of SATA drives you connect to - I highly recommend the cradle. Despite the relatively high price, the cradle is solid and makes life oh' so easy on days like today.

Today, yet another kudos need to be given to the team of people that help develop and refine OpenBSD. For years, I've been running a qmail server that handles mail for various domains associated with our hosting arm and last week we hit a major snag. The server was running out of inodes available to the /var directory where email is temporarily spooled (either awaiting delivery or being bounced). As every experienced admin out there knows, the overwhelming, majority burden of resource usage these days has to do with processing spam. In our specific case, messages were being bounced from non-users in the domains we handle mail for and would sit awaiting "rejection delivery" for x number of hours. The specific problem we had was that we were being inundated with mail originating from a number of IP addresses that are assigned to Russian and Brasiian web/internet operators. Because I don't like the slash-and-burn approach of simply blocking access to our sites from swaths of IP addresses, I used a tool I've been using for years on my personal domains; pf and spamd (specifically, OpenBSD's pf and spamd). Because the email server is running an older (patched) version of FreeBSD, I didn't want to spend the time that would have been necessary to move the installation to OpenBSD so that I could run pf and spamd natively (yes, I realize there are ports for pf for FreeBSD, but I'm not going to recompile, nor do all the bs required to get that up and running - for more pragmatic reasons, anyway). We have an OpenBSD based bridge set up between our internal network (of machines with public IPs) to cut down on private network traffic out to our internet provider. (Even though they should be tossing the traffic, I've found more than one ISP whose routers happily pass private network traffic beyond your router.) I've never implemented spamd pf rules on a bridge and I was concerned as to how it was going to work. (I often get confused as to traffic flow direction and generic firewalling concepts.) With a little work and some queries on the openbsd-misc list, I found the solution and wanted to make note of it:

The rules that finally worked for pf.conf are:

# macros
filter_if="sis0"
pass_if="xl0"

mail_servers = "{ mailip1, mailip2, mailip3 }"
spamd_no_block = "{ relayip1, relayip2, relayip3 }"

table <spamd> persist
table <spamd-white> persist
table <spamd-pass> persist file "/var/db/spamd_whitelist"

priv_nets="{ 127.0.0.0/8, 192.168.0.0/16, 172.16.0.0/12, 10.0.0.0/8 }"

# options
set loginterface $filter_if
set skip on { lo }

no rdr on $filter_if proto tcp from <spamd-pass> to $mail_servers port smtp
no rdr on $filter_if proto tcp from $spamd_no_block to 66.208.74.153 port smtp
rdr pass on egress inet proto tcp from <spamd> to 66.208.74.153 port smtp \
-> 127.0.0.1 port spamd
rdr pass on egress inet proto tcp from !<spamd-white> to 66.208.74.153 port smtp \
-> 127.0.0.1 port spamd
pass out quick route-to lo0 proto tcp from any to 127.0.0.1 port spamd

# block private traffic from going across the filter_if
block log on $filter_if from any to $priv_nets
block log on $filter_if from $priv_nets to any

The specific issues that I dealt with (and solved my dilemma of it not working) were: a) the bridge needed a real-world IP address assigned to one of the interfaces (up until today, it had only been assigned a private IP so that I could access it from a workstation within the network), b) the items in red needed to be added to the ruleset, and c) I added a rule to allow for certain IP addresses and ranges to have immediate access to the smtp daemon because they use the server to relay email.

I realize that c opens up a hole for abuse if a machine from one of those addresses becomes infected, but between smtp-auth being required for relay and the fact that the networks with that type of access are quite limited, it is a risk I am willing to take.I will admit, the items in red are those whose syntax I don't understand. I don't understand egress or why the route-to rule works like it does. I was pulling out my hair at the point when I finally happened across an entry in the OpenBSD archives that showed these rules and when they worked, I simply sighed a sigh of relief.Since activating the above rules, we have gone from 100+ bogus simultaneous smtp inbound connections to 2-3 at any given point in time. The whitelist is obviously working well because when I started this morning it had two entries in about 10 minutes and now it has a hundred or so. I randomly checked the IPs and they appear legitimate enough. The list of greylisted IPs is over 12000 - that is in under 3 hours for a server that handles mail for only 15 domains.

As far as setup of spamd is concerned, I didn't do any more than add the following to rc.conf.local:

spamd_flags=""
spamd_grey=YES

I love it when stuff just works and when the community behind that stuff like things to remain simple. I will be making an [albeit small] donation to the team today because this saved me days worth of work. I can continue to run a system, which aside from the spam issue, works just fine and doesn't deserve being tossed in the garbage heap. Not only did I save time, but the waste of another perfectly useful machine being sent to a landfill.

Just an odd comment/question that (perhaps) someone can answer some day: why would you try to photograph a football game with a Leica M8 and what looked like a 50mm and 135mm lens? I have yet to use one personally, but in research when I was considering buying one, I was under the impression (I stress impression) that they weren't the best for action shooting (mainly because of how focusing works). I don't feel comfortable asking this in a forum somewhere, but if you happen to have an idea of why someone would do this, drop me an email (address to upper right on page). I wish I had taken a picture of the chap. He was an older gentleman and I couldn't really tell whether he was even there to photograph the action or close-ups of the players or random people on the sideline. Perhaps the question is less relevant, considering I don't know what the guy was using it for. Coulda', shoulda' asked...

Last night I finally watched Smokin' Aces. Usually I'm one for odd or disjointed story lines, but this one was a little more off than I would like. I enjoyed the film and will probably watch it on our home theater instead of in our bedroom next time. The action scenes deserve full sound effects (like the 50 cal. going off) and it is one of those full-effect, full-experience films instead of being more philosophically driven. In many areas it felt like the actors were simply trying too hard; and this is what left me with the feeling that the plot was too disjointed. On the other hand, because of the caliber of some of the actors, I kept watching and enjoyed the show. After a second look, in the right settings, we'll see how it fares.

Sowell on 'giving back' from Cafe Hayek

     Roberts comments remind me that all to often we view or are told things completely out of context. To play by my own desired rules, the context in which I view these statements relate to local political issues - of which I've suddenly become interested. We hear statements about our emotive state instead of the reality with which we are surrounded. Statements usually start out with, don't we want?... or it follows that... When looking at the context of the arguments made, we might not agree so readily with the speakers arguments.
     Anyway, Sowell nails it: we give back to society. We can't give back to people from whom we haven't taken a damn thing. (And we ought not be treated like we have by our friends on the neo-socialist right.)

Customer: "...it took forever to arrive there... maybe it got stuck in Customs."
Postal Clerk: "Um, mail going to Hawaii doesn't go through Customs..."
Customer:...walks away with a look of confusion on her face...

I don't know whether or not she realized what mistake she made: a) that Hawaii is a State and is not subject to Customs or b) that Hawaii is not a State and can't understand why packages don't go through Customs. Either way, I started laughing. It was funny.

One of the biggest rip-off markets I encounter every day has to do with home audio/video cabling. There is certainly a time and a place to purchase components with the highest quality standards (placing a 2 cent connector between two $2000 pieces of equipment isn't always the best idea). The problem is that in the home wiring market, there really is little difference between no-name well shielded cabling and those from manufacturers like Monster Cable. I needed 20 five component RCA style cables (two audio and three for component color) for getting rid of the cable clutter caused by rigged setups around my house. At an average of $25 per three foot segment, the price started to become a bit ridiculous ($500 for a total of 60ft of five component cable?) and I somehow, somewhere happened across a website called MonoPrice.com. Thank goodness. I was able to walk away from the purchase (including shipping) for under $100 for over 25 different cables. Not only is their cable pricing extremely reasonable, but they have miscellaneous components (USB, Firewire, Adapters, kvm stuff, etc.) for very good prices. If I hadn't found them, I would have bought all of the stuff in bulk and been left with building my own cables. I prefer this route...

This is simply a note for the internet archives. I spent the better part of 45 minutes following very, very simple instructions as to how to get Patchstick to boot on one of my Apple TVs. I had two 2GB USB thumbdrives and neither worked. I was able to get two Apple TVs to reboot, but never read from either USB drive. Finally, I dug through an old backpack and found a 1GB USB drive that I immediately tested my luck with. It worked. No problems. There was obscure mention of this problem in a 123macmini.com forum note. Later in the thread from the link above, there is mention of a fix by changing a line in the "createPatchstick" script. If you make the appropriate changes, the 2GB drives will work, too. I have some other build notes relating to nitoTV that I'll post later.

In traveling more than most Americans, I think, since I was sixteen, the idea that Americans are generally overweight doesn't seem all that foreign to me. A quick trip between Frankfurt and Chicago airports always seems to confirm this. The numbers, however, in a Flash based map on cnn.com don't seem to make sense. The described increase in obesity in the US seems statistically unlikely (in my mind) and I'm wondering if the rapid increase is due to the criteria for obesity changing along with moderate increases.

Take a look for yourself: CNN.com/heath: Obesity in the U.S. from 1985 to 2006

At the bottom of the map, Obese is defined as having a Body Mass Index of 30 or higher. In the Wikipedia article on Body Mass Index, it states:

"In 1998, the US National Institutes of Health brought US definitions into line with WHO guidelines. They decreased the normal/overweight cut-off from BMI 27.8 to BMI 25. About 30 million Americans who were fine before, are now seen as overweight. The World Health Organization uses the term "pre-obese" where the USA uses "overweight"." (link: Wikipedia Body Mass Index)

With this type of statistical reporting and the obvious questions that should arise if the numbers aren't recalculated based upon one type of value versus another, how are we to trust what our eyes are being told? Furthermore, how are we to trust the people providing the numbers without placing them in the appropriate context?

- Note: the direct source of the map is at this link: http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2007/fit.nation/obesity.map/spread.3.swf

I wish I were able to come up with some sort of quirky story at this hour. Between Pat and I, there are certainly a good share of them. Tonight we honored Pat Weiss in a small retirement party. For a person who has been a part of my life for more years than not, it is not easy to talk about the finality of knowing he's not coming through my door one time or other to ask me whether or not I finished something we talked about me needing to do. For all the times I have been irritated, there have been far more where I was not. I appreciated his experience, his advice, and especially his willingness to listen.
Pat, there are far too few words to say how much your presence will be missed. I hope that your days are filled with more good memories and especially the kinds of things that bring a smile to your face and a laugh to our ears.

I've been mulling how to explain my thoughts on an observation that has become more and more clear over the past few years. I avoid televised news whenever possible. The closest I get to watching the news on broadcast television or cable news networks is when there is something specific that is happening right now that I can't find videos of on the net. Otherwise, whether it is NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox, CNN, etc. I always get the feeling that the reporting staff is talking down to me and has an agenda they just can't refuse to push upon me.
In the reporting about weather trends, specifically what has been coined as global warming, I am shocked by the blatant disregard for facts. I know. There are lies, damn lies and then statistics (I guess, a sort of fact). Context is irrelevant and facts are what you make of them. The earth is warming and it is due to humans - so we are told to believe. We know that the earth was extremely cold some ten to thirty millennia ago. In order for the polar caps and glaciers to have receded, it must have gotten warmer. This was all without modern human industry. It happened because that was the process nature was going through at the time. Some attribute it to God, others to pure geological evolution and natural event. Either way, man had no control over it and those that were alive at the time were probably hopping up and down doing some sort of rain dance because they had to believe there was a magical force that they could influence through their miniscule and likely irrelevant actions.
Regardless about how you feel about the climate (e.g. pro or contra global warming theory), it is amazing seeing humanity search for the next great religion. When facts are ignored and we succumb to dogma because it just might be true, we are talking about a sort of religion. (I am not attacking religion nor theology and a search for greater meaning in life. I am attacking dogma that amounts to statements that are not open to debate. Religion has this, normal human action is wrought with this, and science is especially prone to this, even though your average scientist claims it is not.) Statistics have been presented on both sides of the argument and, for what appears to be emotional reasons, not logical ones, we have generally taken on the crusade of one side of the debate.
Out with Christianity (or organized religion) and in with dogmatic science. Suddenly our society seems obsessed with what everyone else is doing and not with what they are doing themselves to better their lives and their surroundings. When the news spends 80% of its airtime on images from the paparazzi, how can we claim to be interested in generic information - i.e. knowledge - so that we can make relatively informed decisions? We can't. This obsession must have something to do with the emptiness in our own personal lives. I can't think of any other reason why anyone would spend a majority of their valuable time reading about whether Britney Spears has shaved her head or how bombed she got last night. We are concerned with what others are doing instead of making sure that we are being responsible with our own lives. Couple this voyeurism with the need for a cause and you find topics like global warming at the forefront of every conversation - conversations devoid of depth and devoid of substantial statistics bearing knowledge.
I wonder if I feel like Copernicus or Descartes must have; mind overflowing with pure data about the world around them, yet a refusal of the status quo to accept that there was more to the world than they were being led to believe. I'm not placing myself anywhere near either of the above gentlemen in terms of their sheer genius. I am only making the comparison in terms of their (likely) amazement that people would rather be fed with ideas they can believe without critique, than challenged with thoughts that said not only are we not in control, but nature is much greater than we can possibly fathom. We are yet a speck of sand on a vast ocean of beach and the impact we have on our surroundings is less than what we wish it were. We wish we were powerful and we constantly search for means by which to gain this power - whether religion or science - and we continually fantasize about how powerful we'll be if we only do this or that in a certain specific manner. We cannot accept that we are part of a larger game that cares as much about our actions as a river does a pebble being thrown into the rapids.
How frustrating it must have been to have seen and learned that we know so little and yet are convinced of our power out of sheer arrogance and perhaps, hope.