Adobe AIR Linux Alpha
Adobe has dropped the first public bits in their effort to port Adobe AIR to the Linux platform. You can download them from Adobe Labs. Keep in mind this is an alpha release and everything definitely isn't there, yet.
March 31, 2008
December 9, 2007
The Paradox of Choice
This afternoon I watched a Google TechTalks entitled The Paradox of Choice - Why More Is Less given by Barry Schwartz on April 27, 2006. The talk does a wonderful job of summarizing the current state of choice and why in most cases it is making us feel worse. Some of the themes echoed what I read in The High Price of Materialism. Below are notes I took to summarize the key points.
November 30, 2007
From a recent article in the NYTimes about the new Facebook Beacon program:
“Isn’t this community getting a little hypocritical?” said Chad Stoller, director of emerging platforms at Organic, a digital advertising agency. “Now, all of a sudden, they don’t want to share something?”
This guy is completely missing the point. There is a big difference between explicitly sharing information, which is what Facebook user's have been doing up to this point, versus the implicit sharing that the Beacon system is doing. I'm not a Facebook member so I can't comment on the opt-in or opt-out features the system which would make it more explicit and only slightly less disturbing.
MoveOn.org is running a petition that I encourage you to sign.
October 24, 2007
Adobe Offers Flex Builder 2 to Students and Faculty at No Cost
Adobe announced today that beginning in November qualified education end-users will be able to get Adobe Flex Builder 2 for free. I think this is another good move on Adobe's part to help open up and promote the platform.
September 26, 2007
OLPC Give 1 Get 1
From http://www.xogiving.org/:
Starting November 12, One Laptop Per Child will be offering a Give 1 Get 1 Program for a brief window of time. For $399, you will be purchasing two XO laptops—one that will be sent to empower a child to learn in a developing nation, and one that will be sent to your child at home
September 8, 2007
Kickass Cupcakes
Just outside of Davis Square Kickass Cupcakes has opened their doors. While walking back last night I stopped in to sample their wares. Tasty. A little over priced and it didn't look like there were discounts for buying in quantity. Be aware that they also sell cupcakes designed for cats and dogs although the labeling on them (especially after a pint or two) isn't immediately obvious.
From left to right, top: The Mojito, Strawberry Shortcake, and Vanilla; bottom: Chocolate, Cinnamon Chai Pecan Sticky, and Lucky Cupcake.
September 6, 2007
Ignite Boston
Tonight I attended Ignite Boston. This was the first "the attendees make the conference" conferences I'd been to. From a single stage, a wide variety of short (5 minute) technology focused talks were given (full speaker list from the above link). The majority of speakers had their talks geared towards the format. Taking place at a bar was good for the social aspects, but the resulting background chatter overwhelmed some speakers that were not as adapt at speaking into the microphone.
August 4, 2007
Camp Vacation
I recently got back from a week of vacation in Maine at my families' camp. It was great to be off the grid and relax with nature as a backdrop. The only real technology I took along was my camera, which I used to capture the beauty. It had been many years since I was last at the camp for a vacation. My last couple of trips were to replace the roof. It was as I remembered it from my youth. Simplicity is good.
June 28, 2007
MAX Talk: Continuous Integration with Flex, FlexUnit, and Ant
I'm going to be speaking at the upcoming MAX about Continuous Integration with Flex, FlexUnit, and Ant. The talk description is:
Learn about tools and techniques needed to get continuous builds, integration, and testing running with a Flex project. I'll cover the fundamentals of build and test automation, the popular open-source Ant build tool, setting up and running FlexUnit tests from the command line, and integrating the entire process into an automated build system. I'll also demonstrate Antennae, a publicly available set of templates for building even very complex Flex applications using Ant.
If there are particular topics that you'd like to see covered let me know.
June 21, 2007
Antennae: Ant Templates for Flex
I'm pleased to announce the release of Antennae version 1.0000. This is the first release since Antennae was migrated from Joe Berkovitz's blog up to Google Code. You can access the project at http://code.google.com/p/antennae/. This release includes a bunch of tweaks and new functionality. For those that are not familiar with Antennae it covers:
- Macro tasks for invoking mxmlc and compc
- Ready made templates for application projects and library projects
- A robust system for importing and exporting assets from one project to another
- A solid way to compose projects inside container projects
- Dependency checking on sources and libraries to avoid unneeded recompilation
- Handling for HTML page token substitution and web app deployment
- Automated unit test suite generation and command line integration with Flexunit
This release is primarily aimed at getting the tools out there for public consumption. Future releases will focus on additional documentation and other ways Ant can help automate your Flex builds. Please let us know what other improvements you would like to see.
June 13, 2007
4400
I've been very impressed with USA's lead up to the start of this season of 4400 (Jun 17th). I've been getting a steady stream of SMS messages since signing up for them at the end of last year. They have also launched an aggressive online video, blog, website campaign (which at times has been more interesting to follow then the real news). The focus is around these sites:
- the4400.com (which has links to the following three sites)
- promicininfo.com
- promicinpower.com
- promicinterror.com
Then there are the YouTube videos (which are linked from the above sites).
Flashforward Boston Ant Talk
I'm going to be speaking at the upcoming Flashforward Boston about Automated Flex Building and Unit Testing. The description hasn't made it up onto the site yet but is roughly something like:
A talk focusing on tools and techniques needed to get continuous integration running with a Flex project -- that is, ensuring that at any given point in time, your application is buildable and free of errors. I'll cover how to automate the build process with Ant, setting up and running unit tests both interactively from the command line, and integrating the entire process into an automated build system. All tools used are open-source and publicly available.
If there are particular topics that you'd like to see covered let me know.
June 4, 2007
Scotland
I just got back from visiting Erin in Aberdeen Scotland. It was a blast. I've not had time to collect my thoughts and do a proper summary but I have done a first pass at putting up pictures.
May 19, 2007
Credit Card Debt Take II
Some issues seem to only get worse. Some updated statistics about credit cards and debt in American since the last time I posted about this:
- Americans spent one in seven of their take-home dollars on debt payments last year, up from one in nine in 1980.
- In 2006, the industry mailed out nearly 8 billion credit card offers, up from 3.5 billion in 2000.
- Credit card debt, less than $8 billion in 1968 (in current dollars), now exceeds $880 billion, more than tripling since 1988, adjusting for inflation, according to the Federal Reserve Bank.
- In part because of the debt burden, the consumer savings rate fell below zero percent in 2005 and has stayed there.
December 31, 2006
Comment Spam
Over the past couple of days my blog has been heavily hit with comment spam. In the last 10 hours I've gotten more than 100 spam message attempts posted to my blog. I moderate all comments so none of those messages saw the light of day but I still have to deal with them. I've never really tuned the comment spam features of MT and I still haven't. Instead I installed a CAPTCHA system. Previously I had required TypeKey in order to leave a comment but that felt a little to draconian. Not everyone has a TypeKey account or wants to create one. Email whitelists are another option but that still requires that I approve or junk email addresses when they are entered.
I'm all about not even having to look at the spam. While this may mean I automatically trash some important comment or email, I think most people are coming to realize that when 90% or more of all email is spam, people will take drastic measures and at some point a message will be lost. As such I'm now running the SCode plugin. The usability of CAPTCHAs is a concern but unless I go back to TypeKey only comments I don't have another good solution at this point. In fact the use of TypeKey on my system just means that your comment will automatically be posted but you still need to enter the security code in order to post.
November 30, 2006
Midas Touch
I met up with people I used to work with at Ruckus for a few drinks tonight. I'm killing a little time before going to bed and figured I'd do one of these silly memes. So here it is...
November 10, 2006
I Am Not Stephen Colbert
In looking at my web logs today I noticed something very odd. I was getting referrer entries for iamnotstephencolbert.com. I did some digging and for reasons that I can not explain. That domain points at my server's IP address. The bigger mystery is the fact that it has been pointing at my server since the middle of August. I guess whoever registered the domain isn't using it. As a result I present to you http://www.iamnotstephencolbert.com/. View it while you can, I suspect someone may catch on.
Update: My friend who registered the domain finally found the page. The above link now points to a cached copy of the page I put up.
September 11, 2006
Pictures
I think I've caught up on a bunch of pictures that had been sitting on my camera. For your viewing pleasure: David and Karen's Wedding, Gilman Manor's Roof, Saying Goodbye to Matt, Bubbles, and Elissa's Apartment.
My camera acted up a bit so I didn't get a picture of Matt driving off or of Craig during the wedding. Yeah, I should get a new camera, but gosh darn it if my current one just mostly works... Also Elissa's room was just too messy to subject her to having a picture of it on the web.
September 5, 2006
A Random Number
August 15, 2006
Well Now
Atheists identified as America’s most distrusted minority, according to new U of M study. To quote:
Atheists are also the minority group most Americans are least willing to allow their children to marry.
That might help explain a few things :)
August 13, 2006
SpamAssassin
I finally got around to upgrading the version of SpamAssassin that I use. I was previously running 3.0.2 and am now running 3.1.4 I also spent a bunch of time installing a optional Perl modules to enable additional features of SpamAssassin. Boy am I glad that I did. Prior to upgrading I'd say at least 20 spams were getting through a day. In the last 24 hours I've only see one spam that didn't get flagged and it was as close as you can get to not being considered spam.
This makes me happy. I've never been that good with email to begin with but having to spend most of my email time filtering through my inbox only made matters worse. The few times that I've checked email since upgrading I've almost not known what to do. It's sad, but spam in my email has become so common I've almost forgot what it's like. This is a good problem to have to readjust to.
I do have to say that the documentation that I've come across so far for SpamAssassin has been pretty disorganized. I find this really odd since it seems to be under the Apache Software Foundation, which having used many of their other projects, I've usually been happy with the documentation. I suspect that the SpamAssassin wiki holds the knowledge I'm seeking but damned if I can find it. In any case, less spam is good and AFAIK no false-positives.
October 20, 2005
Science on Screen
UPCOMING: Tuesday, November 22, 7 p.m. @ Coolidge Corner Theatre
THE ELEPHANT MAN with guest speaker Jerome Groopman, M.D., whose research on degenerative diseases has lead to groundbreaking advances in the study of cancer and AIDS, as well as multiple sclerosis, Lou Gehrig's disease, and Alzheimer's.
July 31, 2005
Tea
I've been on the search for some new tea lately and rediscovered Republic of Tea while browsing in Cardullo's over the weekend. In particular I was looking for caffeine free teas. I ran across three that are all very yummy.
Lemon Wintergreen: A great mint based tea with the kick of lemon grass. Great for sipping after lunch.- Republic Red Chai: The best non-caffeinated chai tea I've had. Very flavorful.
- Cedarberg Organic Red Tea: Wonderful substitute for black tea and a great base for mixing with lemons, honey, or both.
July 26, 2005
Children
From The Economist's Survey of America. The entire set of articles is a good read, this one statistic caught my eye though:
College-educated women are also postponing children for the sake of their careers. On average, they have their first child at 30, five years later than in the 1970s and eight years later than their contemporaries who have not been to college.
April 25, 2005
Your Digital Library
A great way to organize your library of books, music, and other media.
I think it would be great if they also included an option to read bar codes from digital pictures. For users that don't want to spend the money on an iSight or bar code scanner, but would rather not type in bar codes by hand, snapping digital pictures would be a great alternative. I'm guessing, but I'm sure most of the image processing logic being used by the iSight to read the bar codes could be adapted for reading digital pictures.
April 22, 2005
It's a Whole New Internet
Great article on the rebirth of rapid innovation on the Internet.
April 7, 2005
What do you want to do with your life?
What do you want to do with your life?
Being between jobs and relaxing by doing almost nothing has given me time to think and find my ideal rhythm. I probably won't blog on just what that is since it would require too much thinking :) I do offer up this link as a way to plan what you want to do.
April 6, 2005
More Fake Food
Food Companies Test Flavorings That Can Mimic Sugar, Salt or MSG.
While I'm sure that the product is safe, it's just scary what companies are doing to food these days.
March 3, 2005
I am from the future.
I love eBay.
February 26, 2005
Standing up to fall down
The past two weeks have been a roller coaster of thoughts, discussions, and emotions, culminating in another life changing event. It's just over two years since my last such event and I'm hoping that I don't also blunder this one. Given how draining times like this are, I'm glad they are infrequent.
My fortune cookie from last night offered hope in these simple words: You will come to realizations in you [sic] life that change you forever.
Two weeks ago on Valentine's Day I went into work excited about the first of many transition meetings discussing what will happen to dbConnect (part of Towers Perrin Administration Solutions) when it gets merged into a new (still unnamed) joint venture with EDS. Part of this process will include being rebadged as an EDS employee. I came away from the Town Hall meeting with a positive outlook and a pile of transition paperwork.
My dilemma started when I read the EDS Employment Argeement. It includes a random drug testing clause. This was the first time I'd ever seen such a requirement. I wasn't quite sure how to react to it. I knew such a policy wouldn't affect my employment, but something about it rubbed me the wrong way. In that past I've taken issue with non-competition agreements, but the fact that they are time limited and have a built in appeal/approval process makes them palatable. The drug testing clause struck a different, deeper cord.
Super TPS
I got your TPS right here!
Optimus Prime gets prostate cancer
Optimus Prime gets prostate cancer
There should be more PSAs like this.
The current 15 minutes of fame
The current 15 minutes of fame
The NY Times has a write up on the back story to the video.
February 24, 2005
OASIS allows patents on standards
OASIS allows patents on standards
OASIS is seems has created a new policy that will allow some of their standards to be patented. This pretty much shuts out the possibility of OSS using such a standard. As mentioned in the posting, send email to open@rosenlaw.com to indicate your support against OASIS adopting this new policy.
February 12, 2005
Baby Names
Explore the rank and frequency of baby names over the decades. Really cool. A couple neat ones to look at are Mike and Wendy.
February 5, 2005
rss2email
A simple easy to use RSS reader that sends email when it detects a new item.
February 4, 2005
Why American Idol Works
One question that I hear every time someone starts talking about American Idol is "Where do they find these people?" or something alone the lines of "They have got to be paying that person to audition!". The PDF linked to is entitled "Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments". The items I found most interesting were as follows:
- The bottom quartile inflated performance the most.
- The top quartile underestimated performance.
- After reviewing the work of peers, the bottom quartile ranked performance the same, while the top quartile upped performance rankings.
- After training both the bottom and top quartile better estimated performance.
Granted I've not watched much American Idol, but the really bad singers are always amazed that they are judged so poorly while the good ones are modest and surprised by the kind remarks. I'm also reminded of the one very bad singer who found five other people out on the street that said he sounded good (blind leading the blind).
It's a good read.
December 10, 2004
Link this
Some links I've run across lately:
JonesCAM helmet camera
UncommonGoods find anything but ordinary
MoMA online store
December 2, 2004
Slava Asipenko's Photos
Slava is a friend of mine who I used to work with at BiT Group. He's quite the photographer and has put up a gallery with some awesome photos. Enjoy.
Firefox
A helpful web page for Firefox users that are having problems viewing a particular web page.
November 22, 2004
How Hangovers Work
Cool, I didn't know How Stuff Works added a health section. This article on hangovers is a good read. Not that I actually have a hangover, but I was trying to remember the chemical in alcohol that doesn't really exist in sake, making it less prone to give you a hangover. Turns out it is congeners. Another handy URL is a list of all their articles.
November 21, 2004
Credit Card Debt
Who do you know that doesn't carry a credit card? On one hand a credit card enables you to easily make large purchases but you will easily screw yourself over if you don't pay in full. Some of the updated statistics from the article:
- To a degree, they subsidize the 40 percent of credit card customers who pay in full each month without incurring any fees or charges.
- The typical household has eight cards with $7,500 on them.
- Last year, card issuers made $2.5 billion a month in profit before taxes.
- Last year, they collected $11.7 billion in penalty fees, more than half of the total $21.5 billion in fees they collected from cardholders, according to CardWeb, a research firm.
November 20, 2004
Bangkok Pictures
The first week of November I took a vacation to Bangkok. I had a wonderful time and really got to explore the city. I've finally gotten around to putting up my pictures and getting some descriptions added.
November 17, 2004
Beowulf Talk Notes
Random notes from the BLU Beowulf Talk
The old formula for possible cluster speedup didn't account or map to what ultimately was observed.
Linpack still used
Low latency is still key, different topologies, machine design versus OTSC.
Cluster administration is still one of the biggest problems
MPI, custom NICs, Interprocess communication, MOSIX, SMP, RapidIO, Enfuzion
Differences in Theory, Building, and Simulating clusters
File systems PVFS
Green Destiny low power cluster.
Cluster in a box software: OSCAR and HA OSCAR
General information: Beowulf (the original), Linux Clustering, Cluster World,
November 16, 2004
The Urban Archipelago
If you can wade through the author's ranting and inflammatory remarks, there are some statistics and points worth thinking about. A couple that I found interesting:
And John Kerry won every city with a population above 500,000. He took half the cities with populations between 50,000 and 500,000.
Ruby's walk to class on the first day of school inspired Norman Rockwell's The Problem We All Live With. In this painting ..., a very black Ruby Bridges is escorted to school by four big white U.S. marshals. The image is powerful because it represents the federal government as an institution and enforcer of reason. ... This image of the federal government is now in a coma. The lawmaking bodies that are clustered in Washington, D.C. ..., no longer form the enlightened center from which reason and justice emanate.
November 11, 2004
Rotation Game
The site says it all. The higher levels offer a good challenge.
Give Bush a Brain
Neat little flash game.
Origami
This guy does creates amazing origami pieces. Most of them use just a single piece of paper.
October 16, 2004
Jon Stewart on Crossfire
Jon Stewart offers some constructive criticism about the media and Crossfire itself. One of my favorite bits:
STEWART: You know, the interesting thing I have is, you have a responsibility to the public discourse, and you fail miserably.
CARLSON: You need to get a job at a journalism school, I think.
STEWART: You need to go to one.
The thing that I want to say is, when you have people on for just knee-jerk, reactionary talk...
CARLSON: Wait. I thought you were going to be funny. Come on. Be funny.
STEWART: No. No. I'm not going to be your monkey.
October 7, 2004
What's wrong with the debates
A history of why the format of today's debates are so structured.
October 5, 2004
Back-room dealing a Capitol trend
Back-room dealing a Capitol trend
Great article about the negative effects the Republican controlled congress are having on the law making process.