General Tagged Articles

Solving Unsolvable Problems

There are no unsolvable problems as far as I'm concerned. There are difficult problems. There are complex problems. There is nothing, however, that cannot be resolved with time, research, effort, and perspective.

Competition for Innovation

It seems that the landscape has changed dramatically. 10 years ago, when somebody had come up with something innovative, they would scream it from the rooftops, hoping to get anybody involved in their projects. Lately, it's just the opposite. I fear the dotcom bubble did more long term damage than people realize.

The Terminator Lives

It turns out that the predictions brought to us by the Terminator saga have come true. In a startling turn of events, the U.S. decided to deploy robots in the Iraq war. That's right, robotic fighting machines - complete with machine guns. But fighting machines in general isn't just what I'm talking about - the machines decided to turn on their masters - in a plot taken straight out of the movies.

Sprint Fraudulently Extending Contracts

I went through the painful process of creating an account on at sprint.com - quite possibly the least user friendly process on the internet - only to find out that once again, Sprint had fraudulently extended the contracts associated with my account. Believe it or not, I did achieve a degree of satisfaction.

Dewey Defeats Truman

Looks like the guys at amazon got a little over-zealous trying to get their products out the door.

ITunes and Moving Drives

Several weeks back, my external drive started acting a little funky and gave itself a new drive letter. Since then, I moved all of those files over to a network drive on a samba share. This was part of a much bigger project, so I never really bothered fixing iTunes.

When I did finally get around to trying to get my music working again, I found that it's not intuitive, but it's not at all that difficult.

Source Control and Backups

A couple of projects are on my plate right now regarding source control and backup mechanisms. Both are a pain to get going correctly. Both require minimal human involvement once implemented.

Zip Files Insecure

I recently built a file server at home. I moved my external disks over to my file server and mapped drives within windows. I discovered tonight, that any time I right click on a zip file, I now receive the message "This page has an unspecified potential security risk. Would you like to continue?"

It turns out this is a zone problem, caused by the "High Priority" update known as IE7.

Open Source CAD

I mentioned yesterday that I had taken on the project of building a loft bed. More on that as the project progresses, but the first step in the process was to actually lay out a plan. I began looking for an OSS CAD solution, and I didn't find anything workable. I did however, find a gem that is free, just not open source.

Mapping Out 2008

A new year is upon us, and with the new year I think it's time to lay out some goals, both personal and professional.

FUD has Taken Over

I first heard the term FUD when learning about the SCO / IBM lawsuit over "intellectual property". I put the term in quotes because the long running campaign has just about run it's course - with SCO being de-indexed from NASDAQ and their claims have proven to be baseless.

FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt), isn't a phrase coined recently. It is a marketing principal that has become the focus of modern business and most certainly politics. I'm growing quite wary.

The Future of CPUs

For the last decade, we've been geared to understand that more megahertz is better. A 66 Mhz CPU is twice as fast as a 33 Mhz CPU. A 2 Ghz CPU is twice as fast as a 1 Ghz CPU. At some point that changed. Now we are starting to see marketing that tells us that the number of cores is important. 2 cores is better than 1 core. 4 cores is twice as good as 2. Where are we going with all of this? How many cores are even possible?

Police Misconduct

At one point a long long time ago, I was a skateboarder. All of my friends and I experienced regular harassment from law enforcement, but for the most part it was just that - harassment. They would kick us out of areas where it was perfectly legal to skate, bark at us, and occasionally threaten us with arrest. On a few occasions it was worse.

Fantasy Sports Ruling

A while back, I opined about the NFL's stance on statistics being proprietary and copyright protected. This flies in the face of conventional wisdom that facts are NOT copyrightable. A decision came down recently right along these lines from a U.S. District Court.

PCs are no good for Video

I spent the better part of today trying to get a wedding video onto a DVD. The whole time I just kept thinking about the Apple commercial with the guy putting a video together on an airplane.

Depression

It eats away at you. Slowly but surely your productivity breaks down. Your social structure gradually depletes until there is no social structure to speak of. Your once fulfilling life twists itself around into darkness.

I've been depressed before, so I recognized it as it was happening to me. Fortunately or unfortunately, I have developed some pretty strong coping skills over the years. This lead me down a new road where I could find joy and happiness around me in spurts, but I simply couldn't/can't sustain it. Having children puts a whole new twist on things because it just isn't fair for them to have to deal with a parent going through this.

Things That Only Happen To Me

I've been shy on the updates lately, but I'm fervently working on a wide range of development. Since I don't have much of a technical update, I figured a personal one was in order. I'm not much of a normal person on the surface - anybody who has spent much time on me can tell you that. Along with my quirky personality, I live a bit of a unique life. Some might call it blessed, some might call it cursed. Whatever you think of it, it certainly is unique.

StopMomStop Launched

I finally got around to launching StopMomStop.com. The site is very thin at the moment, but that will all change in the very near future. I like the way that the layout works, although I do have some work to do. A little bit of information about my plans with this site.

Another vbMT Test

This time I think I've corrected my issue with vBMT, but of course I have to publish an entry in order to verify that I have.

Site Growth

This website is experiencing a good deal of growth right now - inadvertantly and I'm not quite ready for it.

On the Horizon

Now that I have a few of my own management tools in place, it is time to start thinking about a strategy moving forward with web development.

Nutch Site Search Implemented

I hate to keep writing updates about how the redesign is going, but that's all I'm doing these days. The search engine is up and online again, although I haven't styled it to match the site (it's the default nutch configuration still), I have done some good work with it.

Making Progress on the Redesign

Implementing a new design has been a bit of a task, especially since the new design implies a varied publication strategy. I'm getting close to completion but a few tasks remain. Also, I have a few notes as to the details of the change in structure.

Site Screwyness

I'm going to go about implementing a site redesign this evening, at least for the blog. Expect things to behave a little bit eradic around here over the next week.

Redesign Coming Soon

A few notes about my site redesign which has now been published.

Via, Clustering, and JBOD

168 servers in a rack got me to thinking about clustering power and the scalability of RAID versus JBOD. Along those lines, I ran into low cost Via based motherboards - which use a low power consumption non-intel CPU.

Mini-itx

Small form factor boards provide the potential for very dense server racks. Cases are available for two motherboard 1u servers, and dual processor mini-itx format boards are available. If you built your own custom case, you could even fit 4 motherboards in a single 1u form allowing for densities of 168 servers in a single rack.

Nutch as a site search tool

My own experiences with implementing Nutch as a site search utility. The product is very effective, but it was a bit problematic to implement.

Thousands of Documents Declassified

One way of making sure that nobody notices a declassified document is to declassify thousands of documents on a daily basis. This is exactly what the government has been doing, for quite a while in fact. No need to worry - there are people out there pouring through the documents at almost as rapid a pace as they are being produced.

vBulletin Installation

I published the Wiki, redesigned the site, and now it's time to move onto the discussion area - and to integrate it with vB as well.

Wiki Launched

I released my Wiki, which serves as another publication interface for this web site. Read the article, then check out the wiki. There are a few golden nuggets to be found.

Casino Payouts Denied

Can you imagine your reaction if after hitting the jackpot the pit boss came out and told you that you wouldn't be receiving your winnings because the machine was not supposed to pay out. I wrote this after reading about a pair of guys this happened to, and was surprised to find out that it is not an isolated incident.

Apache Projects besides the Web Server

We all know about the apache httpd server, but there are a lot of other interesting and mature projects under the Apache foundation's umbrella. Most of them are java based. Most of them are very powerful.

I'm back

After a brief lapse in regular publication, I return to the task of updating my blog daily. An update on the reasoning for the lapse and a few og my off-line activities.

Big Brother is Coming to School

OK, so who is the jackass who decided that fingerprint scanners at elementary schools was a good idea? No, not anti-kidnapping fingerprint cards - daily fingerprint scanning of kids under 10 years old. And they are surprised that parents are up in arms.

Somebody is Reading My Blog

Surprisingly I actually have a regular reader base. I had no idea that anybody was reading the blog, but apparently there are hundreds of regular visitors. Since I posted this article, the user base has more than doubled and I'm still at a point where I don't have much of a publication plan or a regular topic schedule.

Shaq Attack

Former Lakers Center and NBA MVP Shaquille O'neal is busting down doors, making arrests, and enforcing search warrants. When you make 30 million a year playing a sport where you outsize more than 90% of the other players you probably will start to get bored and look for other things to do.

Hey Kids, Rat Out Your Parents

The MPAA wants kids to inform on their parents. They have successfully lobbied the Boy Scouts of America for direct access to children, and have implemented a system which encourages youngsters to betray family members.

IE 7 Released. Boo.

Microsoft decided to confuse webmasters further with an update to their non-standards compliant web browser. Expect a slew of css and javascript hacks to be released in order to manage the shortcomings of the security problem ridden,standards breaking, market share giant.

Happiness is Apparently Overrated

Is a happy, confident kid a better student? Studies say no. The studies themselves are flawed in their basis, but they do provide an interesting opinion regarding the correlation of happiness with productivity.

Fun with Baloons

I'm too engrained in development right now to put together anything meaningful, so here are a couple of videos having some fun with baloons.

A Strong Dad's Resource

The national fatherhood initiative is a solid resource for new fathers. The organization focuses on improving parenting skills and helping fathers to become more involved in family tasks. Sometimes they just cover the basics, but it wouldn't hurt to review what you already know.

Centralized Phone Number

GrandCentral.com offers a centralized phone number that you can take with you wherever you go. It will forward calls to multiple phones simultaneously, allow you to switch between your cell and home phones mid-call, and provides internet based voice mail.

Motivation

Self motivation is one thing, but projecting motivation on others is a different task entirely. It's not a very difficult task, but it is one that requires a little bit of forethought.

Flinstones for Winstons

Cartoon characters selling cigarettes. Only in America. And only several decades ago. We'd all be smokers if child targeted marketing continued today. Still, the video is very amusing.

Ingenuity

A little bit of innovation in engineering a new product is all it takes to achieve vast success. A few of my thoughts regarding ingenuity while in the early stages of developing a new product.

Safari to Launch Library

The safari online library contains a large amount of technical publications primarily from O'reilly press, but there are a good deal of other publishers in the mix. The library offering actually provides an unlimited bookshelf for a reasonable price.

Super Magnets

United Nuclear sells some crazy magnets and other fun toys. The threat of being injured by loose metallic objects while carrying a magnet through the house definitely makes you think about how much fun you could have with something like that.

Picking NFL Games

Using statistical analysis to predict the outcome of football games. A few thoughts prior to implementing actual software to do the task.

Speeding Tickets on the 91 Express Lanes

Although it was mathematically impossible for me to have gotten caught speeding by the CHP, my logical arguments get scoffed at by a judge, who happens to be more interested in pushing through the daily agenda than in understanding basic algebra.

Getting a little busy over here

An activity update in lieu of an interesting article.

Life is a game of Chess

Random musings evaluating the analogy between life and chess.

Personal Empowerment through Self Degradation

Self degradation can turn into a powerful promotional tool. It's at the very least a less common technique for attracting web site visitors.

More on the Complexity of Standards

Complex standards are usually the result of a bunch of people who have no idea about things from a real world perspective. Conference rooms frequently fall victim to semantical debates where the most intelligent strategy is not the most popular one.

Help Desk

A few thoughts on help desk implementations, ITIL and other ISO standards.

I have to start publishing!

Sometimes you just have to do it. Procrastination is easy when you start to get technical about things. If you want visitors and you want a long term strategy to work, you probably should actually put something up on the web first and worry about technical issues when they actually matter.

Browser SVG and Visio Support

Firefox and IE still have a ways to go before they can truly support Visio SVG diagrams. Or maybe it's visio that needs fixing. On the IE front, an adobe plugin is required. On the firefox front, you can get the images to display without any add-ons, but the images lack predictability.