'57 crime in El Segundo solved

This morning I turn on the Teli and hear "phone call to the El Segundo police department," hmm, got to watch that. It was from a woman in Sept 2002 had some tantalizing information about a murder. In 1957, two young police officers are gunned down on a routine traffic stop. So very interesting episode of 48 hours: Hard Evidence you have to admire how much information is on the internet as well, 79 episodes of 48Hours in that link. Can't however page among them next page gives me the same thing, and the 12345 numbers are no better, oh well, who cares, already saw it on cable.

I also saw a Top Gear where they race through West to East on a bicycle, boat, bus and car, well that was the order the arrived at the airport, funny part later where they try to justify that on a car program, but it seems to be the same when I had to go to work in DC, the bicycle won, however I didn't try a boat there, didn't have that kind of money.

Next a green bury marries a Tai, murder.. ahhh at least I am doing other more interesting stuff at the same time. Blogging what I am watching, I got a cool like today from Jack: a QR-Code Generator, it works. Been playing with crash, a very complicated, but also interesting way to debug a server crash, most of all it is paid :)

Yesterday I was shown some pretty cool concept of blank spaces, wow 40 free hours at the bar. I got to visit this place, seems like an incubator, could be good for SocialMixr. Back to taxes, what a vain in our existence.

tired, Ubuntu Desktop is usable

Three days of being in the office takes a toll. Working from home is more pleasant. I can go to my kitchen, walk around naked for all anyone cares, and since summer is coming it will get hot again. I am considering however to dismantle my home office. We simply don't have much space here and with a new family member coming, but then where would I sit when I type this after work. I could save on not paying for internet or cable, I am listening to Fast Money as I type here to find out why my portfolio fell so far today. I have had some wild fluctuations lately, but then I am not the only one. But then we are all hurting here in the US, our currency is falling, and I can only imagine that the next thing that follows is inflation, at the same time the economy isn't working, maybe some of it went underground. We all have to pay for war, it isn't cheap.

On another front the LiLAX president is stepping down, I was the one before him and I fear no one will pickup the torch, shame LUGs were a good place to go learn and network, but maybe Ubuntu is too easy now and they are no longer needed. Lately I simply boot, install and I don't have to find drivers, I hated finding drivers, that was such a draining activity, and I didn't even live in the time where real men wrote their own drivers, nope, actually the first time I installed Linux I gave up when the NE2000 I had didn't work and installed Win98 in the rest of the drive, didn't have time to figure it out, had to get work done. But now days Ubuntu is really usable to me on the desktop. I have all I need. It might not have the polish Leopard has, but it is good enough.

Eliica: Japan's Electric Super Car

I was driving on Sunday on 190th in Torrance, after noticing that everything was closed on Easter Sunday, except the Chinese market we were going too, and saw Enova for the first time, right there in the area where Toyota, Honda and all the car companies are. Makes sense, this company that I was very briefly invested in makes electric drives for trucks and buses. Now I am watching on HDNet the Eliica a electric car from Japan made by Professor Hiroshi Shimizu that can go 300 Km on one charge with a top speed of 400Km/hour. They show it beating a Porche, it reaches 160 earlier, funny thing is the HDNet program has somewhat bigger numbers then the WikiPedia articule I reference here. So the internal combustion engine beat the electric engine about 100 years ago, probably because of the cheap waste product avialable then, gasoline, but now at $4/gallon in the US soon and the advances in LiON batteries this should be the time that you can put the engine in the wheel, something that Fernand Porche already did for the worlds fair of 1900 and got an award for that car, but not something that was adopted widely. So they are talking about production for the Eliica and with Germany in the forfront of solar technology that could recharge this vehicle and power a house, it seems to me that the future might not coming here in California, as the Chinese are shipping 50 electric taxis in a year. They show a battery factory by Shaghai making electric cars, wow, I wonder where the US is in that future development?

For the second day Ron calls me about nLite a deplyment tool for bootable unattended Windows. Very interesting concept, trying to get him to give a short presentation at LiLAX. The market is crap again today and I have to go to work. Do I finally sell?

quiet

This moring I go to the Apple store only to find out the mall is closed, oh easter Sunday, they do respect some holidays in Manhattan Beach, oh well, no problem car seat needs to be mounted, spend time with JJ, call and old friend I found in my little brother's birth hospital visit registry, turned out to be another Pedro, his signiture didn't match what he thinks it was back in '79 nor Mom think it was, oh well.... more carseat stuff to do, time, so little time to do tech stuff lately.

I want to play with the iPhone SDK, it is 2 Gigs, and I am itching to download the iPhoneSDK.dmg, but don't have a Mac to do this on right now.

long day

Finally off the Skype, been talking all day, this is more work then a day at work and pays less, startups... I guess that the SocialMixr might be very slow, haven't heard from anyone in a while, but the other 2 are still taking time and show some promise. I need sleep.

stuburn

I see myself in the mirror sometimes when I talk to my Dad, maybe he has put in me some of those really annoying traits that I may have. Today I was trying to convince him of doing his journal on Blogger, but I had such a current of negativity that I gave up and just hung up, something I am sure will make him mad :(

So he has been mailing these very big volumes to me on paper, I don't really read paper very often, but then he says that you can put it in a PDF and can't email it because it is bigger then an attachment, this is kind of a problem, so why not just openly publish all of this on Blogger and get some ad revenue, I think he could make money on his memoirs, but no he insists on mailing them to us and we don't have time to read all this past, besides some of it brings back bad memories like the conversation I had with him, eventually I hung up the phone, what a bigger statement could I make then this to the point of shut up and listen.

Anyhow, guess my time is better spent taking pictures on the beach, which is what I intend to do now.

Iraq

I went down town a few weeks ago and visited the Aviation Metro station to catch the 438 express bus to down town for 1.75, great deal if you get there before 8:45, so I contemplated taking some other transport, but ended up driving, sometimes it is too hard to figure out the bus system, and driving is easy. I had a GPS with me.

I am watching an interesting report on Captin Ann Gildroy in South Iraq on HDNet's Dan Rather Reports, pretty interesting report. Lucean Reed photographed it, HD is stunning anyhow, although right now I am seeing it again on a SD TV, not that great, but shows you that those new channels have some good content too. Anything to keep me from this boring monitoring I am doing now, well, better get that done, want to sleep.

Early Wednesday

Last night I parked in a street cleaning 8AM spot, guess I am going to work early today, too bad. I don't know why, but again on Wednesday I wake up before dawn, so I take this sweet little Dell laptop and turn it on. I really like the small size, not as heavy as the 15.4 inch screen, but very light, cool. D410 is a very neat item, old probably, haven't looked it up on the website yet. I still would like an MacBook Pro to play with, since they are the best laptops out there, an Air would be cool too, but they are pricey.

Since it is pretty early, I have time to finally read SlashDot. BigDog is a rather cool project of a walking robot that looks like 2 rear ends of a dog without a tail. Strange how something so simple in nature is a big step forward in technology. Visa, NYSE: V, is the big news this morning, the US has been 5 years in Iraq. I need to get the pictures off the camera, grr.... So many OSs and computers is spreading me thin.

Top Gear

I am watching a recorded episode of Top Gear on BBCA Ch131 on TWC. Seems like trying to view the video on BBC.uk blew up my FireFox, grrr.... Anyhow it is a neat show of challenges, the one I liked best was a crossing of the English channel in a Nissan pickup with an outboard engine, a small convertible with a sail and a camper with a boat hull under it. They still had to drive to Dover to launch, very neat visuals. I have been trying to find pictures. Yesterday we went to a baby shower and then 3rd St. where I spent lots of time at the Apple store. I am interested in the iPhone SDK, but they were not able to help with that at all.

Tech

So I am told I need to talk more about tech to get my blog read and perhaps make some mad money in advertising revenue, nah, this blog will likely never make mad money. Today's find was drop.io a place to put your files and share them with others. Very simple interface and it has a time you specify, so you can just keep creating drops. Cool idea cool name.

Anyhow I guess I should get this room cleared so I can take on the next task.

clearing decks

So I have the job I want, and keep getting gigs, I can't blog anymore :(

A week

Seems like a week since I bogged, and about to go to the Huntington Library, a botanical park in San Marino CA. Yesterday LiLAX had a great presentation on Blender, what a cool 3D animation program.

Today I blew out the N95 with an update to 11.2 from 10.2 firmware. All my data was gone and it seemed to be factory reset. I had done a sync right before so should still have all my contacts on Outlook. I then played with connecting the phone to the 42" monitor and turned the camera on itself, kind of fun. The N95 is very capable, I will leave my data out for the moment and play with it. But no contacts, geez...

Been spending time at the data center this week. Like visiting someone in prison, without the people, lots of machines in cages. I might have a cool video to post someday, I wonder if we would get in trouble for posting video shot there?

dear neighbor

So I try to go to my router on WiFi and see and SBC logo, wait a minute, I am not with SBC, I use RR, hmmm, even has an email address at SBC, so what do you write to your neighbor when you discover that you are surfing on their WiFi. In fact the stranger thing is that this makes no sense at all, the ID of linksys doesn't really seem to match the DSL router this is just bizzare.

Connected at 1536 Kbps (downstream)
384 Kbps (upstream)

Not very fast, has been on since 2004, well first on then, that is about when I started paying for my internet connection, I do remember there was a linksys here way back then. This is fun, I have access, but I thought I was on my own router.

I have been using IPChicken for a while, and this morning found some code to add it to my site:

Boring work

but relaxing a nice change of pace from the last job. I have heard lots of very interesting conversations, this is a pretty neat place. Then went to LAJUG, a frenchman in a suit gave a talk about Coherence: Distributed Cache and Data Grid solution.

I decided to look at the TuxedoTravels, I saw the guy speak on Sunday, it seems like a really cool idea to go from HK to London overland in a Tuxedo, spreading money along the way that was given to them for charity. It was a pretty cool website as well.

Turn your clutter into money.

During yesterday's talk talk I thought about things I know about. The past few months I have been tasked with creating more space. So here are some ways of clearing a room without putting it in a landfill, please recycle:

1. Time is money too, if you have a good job, sometimes the simple solutions are the quickest, put your stuff in the curb/alley with a FREE sign, have a garage sale, yard sale or send a message on Craigslist saying that you can pick it up here, take it to a user group meeting, leave on the back of the room, BarCamp, action it off, raffle it, give it away if it doesn't have enough value to other people. Remember that your trash could be someone else's only TV.
   
2. Amazon is a very easy way to search for your item and list it, if you are the low bidder for it, in my experience, sell in less then a week. Some items are amazingly popular and you wouldn't expect it. Especially if you don't have any other bidders. My popular item was a 20" TV/VCR old style CRT went for $199+33 shipping. This will cost you time and you have to be prepared to ship within 2 days of the email, so if your item lingers, or you go on vacation, delist it, you don't want the hit in reputation.
   
3. eBay, if in a hurry use a fixed price, if you can wait a week, action it.
4. Your blog, maybe someone in your area, that you know that reads it wants it.
5. Bring it to a meeting, put in the back of the room, be realistic, don't bring an obscure part to a meeting of people who couldn't possibly have a use for it. If it has a mailing list, advance notice might be a good idea.
6. If a popular item, maybe you can action it off at the meeting, or give away as a prize.
7. Don't buy or take things you don't need from garage sales.
8. Garage sale! Usually the quickest way to clear a garage.
9. Yard sale, well not much different, but depending on your living arrangements I guess.
10. eWaste, recycling, trashing, hopefully this is your last option, as it is the worst in terms of the environment, not all things get rescued from the general trash, but if you have homeless in your back alley, perhaps.
    

At some point I will attempt to make a slide deck with pictures to use at a LUG meeting or BarCamp, after all we all have this problem with space at some point.
To the left, my current pile of stuff that needs to go. Actually I still need that VCR, sold all the others, but does it work? Don't remember, the Tivo is something I wish I knew how to use, but haven't invested the time, do need it, hey I use that headset sometimes for Skype, but have another, I could sell, speakers, maybe need those someday, but not right now, just get it all out, I always need space, besides I keep getting more free stuff given to me, if I bring it home it is probably cooler then what I have here.

19" HP A1097C Sync on Green Monitor

I am writing this from the Kitchen today, even though I have another open Blogger window on some other computer in the house, but I guess I need to get rid of this space hog, 19" monitor sync on green, so it won't work with modern video cards, the funny part is that yesterday in the Zombies session someone commented that some old terminals were a great business for someone that is refurbishing them, they aren't made anymore and some people really need them, so they have a high salvage value, strange, but I guess I should research if this HP A1097C can make me some cash. US Computer exchange sells them for 125+80 shipping, wow. Lots of cash for something that I got free and truth be known, would have given away for free to anyone who cared to break his back carrying it out of here.
I even have several of the special TI chip TVP3026-220PCE equipped MATROX Mil2P/8/DELL2 cards that would drive this beast. I once spent a week learning how to tweek a XF86Config file to get it working, what a waste of time, I probably still have the computer here to plug the card in and drive the beast, but if someone would buy this all, great, shipping it out seems like the solution to all things that are here.

LiveBogging

I haven't gotten the idea of what to do about live blogging at a BarCamp. On the one hand I would like to do it in the sessions, but it would distract a little that I take notes everywhere, but it is still a good thing for the event that those great talks are documented on the internet. Travis had a really great one about digital life, wow, there are also links on http://video.google.com he had 4 links of things, but I haven't found them yet. I need to do some post conference work I guess.

Almost lost

the last post too, but averted disaster, is my page too complex now, I am hitting bugs I didn't know existed. Anyhow BarCampLA is open, come join us at 331 N Maple Dr., Beverly Hills California. Past BarCamps have been great, anyhow read the site.

BarCampLA

It is amazing I lost a whole post on Blogger this morning by having it load a compose window and then exiting, trying to save and grrr.... all gone. I only have the drive to Barcamp in my ^V buffer.


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Amazon referals

I am playing this morning with setting up an Amazon store to see how easy it is. Then I have to run to AOL for BarCampLA.
View Larger MapDon't you hate it that in the US the lawyers always waste your time on every website. I just want to play with this, not go to court. After filling in endless forms with the same info I already provided to Amazon as a seller, I finally get a place where I can place items and create a store. Below the inframe version: Seems like Amazon Associates is separate from other Amazon businesses.