November 2006 Archives

Oh let the geeky madness begin....

The idea that it could even happen was planted in my brain by a certain Mr. B in August 2004 at the Movable Type 3.1 Party. This last summer I used the browser of my Nokia N80 to login to my website hosting control panel when I was not near my laptop or a internet cafe. This last week I wondered when some enterprising person would develop a Symbian Series 60 SSH client.

Today while reading blogs, I hit the mother load of future geekiness while reading Mike Rowehl's post on "E61 and Putty." Yes, Ladies and Gentlemen, the nice and lovely open source programmers over at SourceForge have developed PuTTY for Symbian OS.

I have installed it on the N80 and have accessed the shell of my server via PuTTY on the mobile, surfed a few directories... oh the things I can do to entertain myself while stuck in traffic... Wahoo...

In the beginning, was the command line. ;oD

* I am on mile 978 of the new Prius's odometer and down to the last gallon or so of the 2nd tank of gas. I am stretching it out to see how far I can go on a tank of gas, as it is my goal to top 500 miles before I fill up again. The car is fooling me and announcing it needs more gas when it has about 2.5 gallons to go. I am currently averaging about 52 miles to the gallon. Black Phoebe the Trickster.

* Wait a minute! How can Ms. Jen's new car already have nearly a thousand miles on it in 7 days? Well, Ms. Jen answers, "All the better to get rid of the pesky Break In Period with..."

* James Craig, aka Sir Cookie Crook, is a true gem. No ands if or buts about it. A big thanks to James for his help with my job search.

* After spending a few weeks with Ruby, and the last few days with PHP, can I break up with Javascript? JS, I love you, at times you are very elegant and loquacious, but I am not in love with you and you are very particular, as well as wordy. I may have to leave you for Ruby, who is sleek, a language of few words and even fewer nested conditional statements ...

Preach it, brother. Or humor it, as the case maybe.

I am still waiting for one of the dev api wiz boys to develop an internets combine harvester that will help me reap all my data into one haystack. yep.

Erika and I went up to the new refurbished and renovated Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades this afternoon. We booked tickets a month ago and the first date available was the Monday after Thanksgiving. It was worth the wait, not for the disputed collection, but for the gardens and Villa itself. Although, the golden crown of flowers and enamel from the first century was very impressive.

Afterwards, Erika, Thomas and I went to a French cafe in Culver City. Thomas and I talked design shop most of the time, sorry E! But we did get some ideas for additional functionality for his website fleshed out. Thanks to both Erika and Thomas for a lovely evening.

The rear view camera is way too much fun. I have a feeling that I will be moblogging this view often.

The 2007 Prius is really a computer on wheels with air conditioning, all it needs is an internet connection...

Tada!

It was Joe's idea to road trip to Bishop today to pick up the Prius rather than wait for the holiday weekend to be over and go on Monday with Mom. I am a sucker for a spontaneous road trip, well, just about any road trip.

After much discussion and thought due to Sugar Plum's infirmities over the course of the last few days, I went to my Credit Union this morning and walked out 10 mins later with a check. Tomorrow, my brother Joe and I will take a road trip to pick up Black Phoebe the Prius.

Big thanks to OCTFCU for a rapid and painless auto loan process and to Jeff Fredrichsen at Perry Motors for making a phone deal on a day old black Prius fresh from Toyota with no time to collect dust or a waiting list. Gotta love small town auto dealerships.

Sugar Plum, the wonder Honda, is a bit weary from the year of no driving. Ok, she was weary to start with before I left for Ireland.

Miraculously, she survived her year of non-operation in my brother's driveway, other than having a local youth relieve her of her stereo. When I returned 6 weeks ago, I was able to start her up with a jump, go get new hubcaps from Hubcap Mike, and Sugar Plum has been happily trotting down the road, albeit with a stereo sized hole in the dashboard.

On Friday night, whilst driving home from Whole Foods, I received several honks from other drivers. It was not until I was driving down Bolsa Chica that a fellow in another car informed me that Sugar Plum did not have her back lights on. Crap.

Ever since Sugar Plum was purchased as a gently used auto, she has had electrical problems and shorted out 2 stereos. I became quite competent at checking and replacing the fuses under the steering wheel. After much to do, we found out that the previous owner or their stereo installer had screwed a screw into a wire in the trunk while trying to install the back speakers. We solved the problem by pulling out all the screws in the back speakers, which was much cheaper than running all new wires from the front of the car to the back.

Yesterday morning I tested all the fuses and they are all working. Joe and I pulled out all the lights from the back: parking/running, brake, and turn signal, all the blubs were good and the filaments happy. The brakes work and so do the signals, but the running lights don't turn on when I turn on the headlights. Joe looked it over and said, "Sugar Plum has a short."

Electrical wiring is tricky, to find the short and re-wire may take more than she is worth. Sugar Plum needs to become some teenager's project car... Do you know a nice young person taking auto shop who would like to rebuild and revamp a Honda?

Every so often, my brain serves up stuff that I am not quite sure where it would be appropriate to post and probably shouldn't post... but they need to go somewhere... thus, Hanen's Heresies:

On Family Circus :: When will Billy start dressing up in Dolly's clothes?

On For Better or For Worse :: Lynn Johnston, Pa-Lease... Anthony cannot have that mustache at age 25 in 2006. Sorry, maybe when you were young in 1976, but not 30 years later. For at least the last 20 years, that mustache means black leather, chaps, and ....

On Marriage :: All humans, regardless of sexual orientation, have the right to fall in love, get married, and then get sick of each other.

On Terrorists :: If starving students can start moving companies, can we not convince nice young disaffected terrorists to channel their energies into a demolition company?

... Is 88.1 fm. I have listened to an hour of wacky theories. This is good radio. :o)

Today, Six Apart held a Movable Type Hack-a-thon for developers, designers and MT enthusiasts to give folks a chance to work on a plugin, design, or feature.

Walking to the Movable Type Hack-a-Thon.

At Cafe Couleur at the bottom of Potero Hill.

I am out and about visiting Bishop and San Francisco. I am off to visit my mom this weekend and then to the Movable Type Seminar on Monday and the MT Hack Day on Tuesday!

I will be back in SoCal on Wed, Nov. 15th to speak at Biola University at 7pm in the Guest Artist Series on "Moleskin to Mobile".

The displacement I am talking about is my 6th rib on the right side. Diagnosis as of today's doctor visit, is that in moving a month ago and hauling big boxes and luggage around, I displaced my rib. It hurts.

Ribs - they just need to be left alone to heal. Pphhbbbttt....

Today, my sister, Allison, and I went to the Apple store at Satan Coast Plaza where she purchased a new 15" MacBook.

We decided that her old (2001) iBook should be given to Christine, but before it could be it needed to have an OS upgrade as it was still running 9.2. The Apple Store assistant manager, Maki Al-Nooh, told me how to upgrade a non-DVD drive old iBook to Mac OS X Tiger.

This is not for the weak of heart, nor folks who scare easily or lack patience. My PowerBook, the Silver Princess, had to become the Master machine to the old iBook. Using a Target (press "T" on start up of the iBook or slave machine) with a firewire connection, I was able to allow the two partitioned drives (Charlemange & Sparta) of the iBook to appear on the desktop of my PowerBook. Insert the OS X disk, reboot, tell it to install on the drive partition of the iBook with the most space (unfortunately, it did not give me the option to wipe the drives), and then let it do its install thing for an hour or so.

Now comes the hard part... It is finished, it reboots, but my desktop is not mine but the new desktop. Don't panic. Take a deep breath. Put the iBook's drives into the trash/eject. Disconnect the firewire. Reboot both.

Don't PANIC. iBook boots to OS 9.2. Silver Princess the PowerBook boots as the new OS X Tiger. Take deep breath.

Tell OS 9.2 to start up as the New OS X Tiger on the Sparta partition. Reboot. All is well, starts up as new OS X. Use the disk erase to take out all the old files and OS 9.2 to give more room to the old school puny 10 gb drive. Happy, all is well with the iBook. Now need to find a USB wifi dongle or an original Airport internal card for it.

Contine to tell oneself not to PANIC about the fact that the PowerBook is still booted as the new drive and not a lick of my stuff is on it's drive. Reboot with no firewire or connection. Pull out battery for further measure. Breath deep. Reboot machine. Ms. Jen's Silver Princess is back with all of its files and programs.

All is well.

Screenshot from latimes.com Tues. 11/7/06 at midnight.

Complete and absolute relief. I am so glad that we as a nation have returned to a medium / center. I am also excited that 2 Independents have won Senate seats. Thank God.

And even bigger excitement is our first ever woman Speaker of the House. Big Yeah!

Do.it.today.before.8pm. Go Vote.

Mon 11/06/2006 12:55 Driving to downtown LA.

Back in June in preparation for starting the Around Ireland project, I bought a Nokia N80 on expansys.ie for goodly sum of money, mostly for the 3 megapixel camera and the wifi on the mobile / cell phone. By and large, the Nokia N80 kicks serious bootay.

The camera is ok, it is slow and I miss shots. My Irish 6680 was better for average photography. But when I do get a photo with the N80 it is very good and print quality. Night photos suck, even with the on board flash. My Nokia 7610 took better night photos. I need to find the flash that I bought for the 7610 and use it with the N80.

The crowning glory of the Nokia N80 is the XHTML/CSS web standards compliant web browswer. Web sites look good, very very good. The N80's browser also has a zoom function so that you can zoom into various bits to read or see better. Very nice.

The Tipping Point feature of the phone is the WLAN / Wifi. Yes, the N80 has wifi. If you are in a space with wifi, the phone sniffs it and you can set the wifi up as an access point and then browse to your hearts content without accessing the pricey data / 3G plan of your mobile /cell phone carrier.

Second tipping point is that you / I, the owner, can update the phone's firmware online. I have already done it and it made a big difference to get the next version of the phone's operating system.

But what all of us N80 and other Nokia wifi mobile device owners are waiting for is Skype for the Symbian Series 60 phones. Skype, where is the love??? If I have access to a good fast wifi connection and Skype for Series 60, then I don't need to worry about using my Cingular minutes do I? I can just use my Skype account to call from a stationary point that is near wifi.

Today Darla Mack blogged about EQO's new IM and Skype software for J2ME capable devices. Whilst waiting for Skype to make a S60 version of their software, I went over to EQO to try their's out.

Here's the scoop: After installing the EQO software to my mobile / cell phone (easy), I was able to IM Lauren on AIM. Simple and straightforward. I went to EQO's website, registered, gave my mobile / cell number and they texted the download link to my phone. I downloaded the file, installed, typed in my EQO login and password, set up my AIM and GoogleTalk, and off I went.

I first tested the EQO with my Cingular / AT&T 3G connection and IM'd Lauren. Then I used the access point for the wifi at my brother's house and had several lines of IM with Lauren. The only limiting factor was the standard phone keyboard of the N80 (not QWERTY). I am not a fast texter nor am I fast with IM'ing on a phone, as I feel compelled to have correct spelling, grammar and punctuation. Silly me.

Then I installed the Skype Plugin. EQO has one install a separate EQO Skype Plugin on one's computer. According to their website, to use Skype on one's mobile / cellphone, one must have one's computer on, be logged into Skype, the EQO plugin on, and EQO app on the phone on. And then you use the phone to make the call. It kind of worked. As you can imagine, it was like calling a radio station when you are right next to the radio, there is a lot of feedback. A lot of echo.

Using the house's wifi as my connection, I first called Erika, I was within 10 feet of my computer, and the Skype call from my mobile was a no go. Then I left the computer in the kitchen and moved to a bedroom and called Lauren, this time we could both hear each other but with much feedback and echo. I could hear Lauren just fine not through the phone, but on the computer speaker in the other room. She could hear me speaking through the phone, but with echo and noise. But we could do it.

This was an exciting test. Thanks to EQO for the software and to Lauren & Erika to being the test guinea pigs. Even if one could only make this work, imperfectly, with a computer in the vacinity and not out on the road, at least it is a step forward to a carrier neutral mobile world.

Last night I went out to dinner at Utopia on First Street in downtown Long Beach with Lauren and two of her work colleagues from the "Ad Agency". Dinner and the company were delightful. Afterwards we moved two doors west to the House of Hayden where I was to meet up friends celebrating Kimm's birthday and more of the "Ad Agency" folk were having a lovely time.

During the course of dinner and cocktails, Lauren and her friends offered many ideas about my job search, told tales of a career in advertising, made recommendations and offers of help to get a job in the advertising agency world. I stated that I preferred to work at a technology company or design firm, but the others argued that things were riding high in ad world and that I could easily get a job. Stories were told of agencies in New York, San Francisco and LA.

I got home and felt off. Not due to the wine, nor the duck dinner, nor the dogs going crazy upon my arrival, but something was off. I woke up at 4am with Belle wanting to play ball (having a small dog dropping a tennis ball on your chest at 4am is hard to ignore). It was in the time that it took to go back to sleep that clarity arrived.

As I took Belle's ball away, put it out of her reach on the mantle piece, and then turned back to my bed, I realized why I am very ambivalent about ad agency work. Yes, it is creative. Yes, it is a great opportunity to work on high profile websites for large companies with large budgets. Yes, it is an opportunity to work with a team of highly intelligent and creative folk. But... but...

My main reason that I want to give up my freelance business and go to work for a tech company or design firm is that I want to participate in the creation of an interface, device, or software that could impact or make easier a small or large part of someone's life. Whoever that someone or someone's life may be.

I have watched several techno-phobic friends and family members who wanted nothing to do with computers or cell phones come alive to the technologies and possibilities when a program or device came out that helped them do a task easier than they could do before, and they went from hating the technology to loving it in less than an hour.

* Blue would never ever touch her email the whole time I worked with her. I would read her email and call her to let her know that she needed look at it. Then I invited her to gmail, she moved, and now she loves email and uses her gmail account daily.

* Alex hated email and really had no use for computers. His cellphone was the bane of his existence, as he hated answering it. Then he got a Sidekick and I watched him in the course of one afternoon go from a playa hater to a Sidekick lover. And he returned his emails from his Sidekick.

* My mom recently threw her cell phone at the dashboard of her car out of frustration, it bounced and shattered her windshield. She could not see the screen nor navigate the interface even with her glasses on. She went over to Verizon and demanded a new phone, they up-sold her to a smart phone, and now she is moblogging. Really. She figured out MMS on her own and I was stunned to find a picture message from her when I was in Ireland, and when I returned, I set her up on Vox. Even more shocking for my luddite parent, she ordered cable broadband this week so that she can spend more time on Vox: writing captions, making comments and otherwise enjoying her new blogging adventure.

* My friend Shawn in Dublin is fully deaf in one ear and has only 25% hearing in the other with a hearing aid. He is a Ph.D student at Trinity and he conducts most of his non-face-to-face communication via text messaging. One can't leave him a voicemail, as he can't hear it. Shawn would really like it if his voicemail could send him a text or email that is the voice message all typed out. Wouldn't we all?

All that said/written, I want to participate in a team that creates a program / software, an interface, website, or device that changes lives even if in a small way that creates joy. I want to make a difference and I heard Vint Cerf when he spoke to the TCD computer science grad students on changing the world, even if in a small way. Some may claim that an ad agency can and does shape the way individuals and cultures behave and thing, I am reluctant to join that world and ambivalent about it. I would rather brave the tech world with all of its flaws. I would love to work in mobile, as most mobile interface and menus are difficult at best and windshield shattering at worst. I would love to help my mom and Shawn be able to communicate to the best of their abilities.

A shop on First Street in downtown Long Beach is all dressed up for Christmas. Once again, can't folks wait until the day after Thanksgiving?

Tonight a bunch of folks met up at the House of Hayden in downtown Long Beach to celebrate Kimm Gardener's birthday. Kimm and Kelli above. It was good fun to catch up with the whole CH3 crowd of folk. Shawna Gregory and I brought out our cell phones and compared dog photos. ;o)

During my year in Dublin, I got very used to the convenience of the purple Morphy electric hot water kettle in my apartment's kitchen. I found a variety of uses for the less than one minute to boil hot water that the Morphy cooked up beyond just a cup of tea, like unstopping a drain, boiling water in the kettle quickly and then making pasta which reduces prep time, pouring the boiled water over chopped veggies in a strainer for insta-blanched veggies to go over rice, etc.

Since returning to Calif., I have missed insta-hot water and have looked around at various stores for a hot water kettle only to be very surprised that Ranch 99 carried a variety of rice cookers but not a single water kettle. Yesterday, I went to Long's Drug Store near my brother's house for some cleaning supplies and in walking to the cleaning supplies I walked past the electric home appliance section and found two different brands of kettles.

Both types of kettles are of thinner plastic and do not seem to be as sound as the Morphy brand in Ireland, and the one I did end up buying is not quite as fast as the Morphy. But the good news is that the above kettle that I did buy is a lot better than attempting to boil a cup of water in the microwave and then buring myself as I try to get it out of the microwave. Yes, I do have a metal kettle for the stove, but it is in a box in the garage, somewhere...

While I like Halloween, I don't love it, and in recent years I haven's really gotten into it. I much prefer Groundhog's Day over the other 3 solar cross-quarter days (May Day, Aug 1, and Halloween).

Halloween last year found me hiking around the hills above Glendalough and that evening sitting in my room amazed at all the fireworks. Halloween in Ireland includes lots of bonfires and fireworks and not so heavy on the costumes/fancy dress and/or trick or treating. It is a good old fashioned fire holiday. Goodbye summer, hello winter.

I am a fan of All Saints Day, even though I did not grow up Catholic. In college instead of throwing a Halloween party, I had an All Saint's Day party on Nov. 1 where everyone had to come as their favorite saint. The best part is when the "Hermans" came dressed as the 80s metal band, Saint.

As I am a day late on a post about All Saints Day, I shall celebrate All Soul's Day or Dia de los Muertos today by going to lunch at El Camino Real and then attempting wake Alex from the dead mid-afternoon... ;op