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Wednesday, July 30, 2008

LA Drupal

Last Tuesday of the month is LA Drupal in Venice California, which I have been going to every meeting, since it is such a dynamic group. Charles Charton, does an excellent job of exciting the group about Drupal being a product like RedHat, getting the crowd to contribute, but the meeting is free as will be Drupal Camp, but still it would be more then welcome if someone were to contribute to a panel they need, if they don’t have time to write it themselves, Drupal 6 has some panels that need to be finished and if you need it for your project, why not encourage the developer, remember how the beer prizes worked? Money is probably just as good. So September 13th Drupal Camp starts and next spring might be Drupal Con in LA. The speaker works at Fox and designed the site for remhq.com, a rock band, pretty cool stuff, with aggregated Twitter messages, videos and blogs, so the home page aggregates all the data. All the tour dates are taxonomy terms, each of the videos, tweets and blogs are nodes. People can upload the content to all of the websites they already use like Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, and tag it with the concert, that way it will be on the right date. Great presentation, from Blake, but the networking break was great, I am trying to get Charles Charlton to talk with John O’connor our LiLAX president to figure out what to do on September 13, which is in contention right now as to what to do at LiLAX. After the intro of the REM web page, we got a whole overview of how to make our own website, cool stuff.


I also saw that Lion YouTube on NBC this morning, very touching, watch it, if you want to get all weepy.


So I discovered that the crap in this post came from using Word, when I wasn't connected to the internet, decided to type it into something with spelling checking, so Notepad wouldn't work.

Sunday, July 27, 2008

dreams

So I go to the TRW swap meet, on the last Saturday of the month, it goes 7-11:30 am, but you better leave early as the sun will burn you, still feel my neck peeling skin, not something I should subject myself too, skin cancer is definitely a risk for me, my dad got it. But there are so many booths and the offerings and prices are very compelling. I don't think the vendors get much for their efforts, but the space the gain by selling out. I was on the look for a DS3 router with a HSSI card, but I guess T1 is about the best that I could do at this venue. Instead I bought things I didn't need, that end up stealling time from me like a passwd protected 1 GigB USB thumb drive, $7 and a SouthWing SH315, which won't work with the laptops for Skype, the reason I bought it, but might with the N95, not too confortable to wear, thouhg, $15, anyone want it? So there goes my dream of buying a DS3 router for cheap for the new office. And who knows if these laptops have bluetooth, they both seem to have a symbol on the, but I can't find support for it.
I was rather intregued by some older technology, like the telegraph. When you think about the simplicity of running one strand of cable, perhaps grounding the other and managing to send a signal between towns, this must have been quite a revolution in the 1800s. Seems that smoke signals and even the internet are now considered to be telegraph, or the long-distance transmission of written messages without physical transport of letters. But I think of it being that key with morse code, which could easily be done with smoke or light as well, but the key to the left works with electricity. I almost felt like buying a key, it is just such a simple signal generator. I wonder if someone could actually transmit ASCII binary on it at some slow baud rate? Might be a Defcon challenge.

I was really impressed with the great condition of this 1957 record cutting machine with a radio and a mic. So you could cut your record off the air, AM radio or from a live band, kind of amazing technology. I have to say that the sound quality of the recordings was first rate, perhaps better then some current technology, wonder if I can hear the limits of digital and transistors. It had a quality I haven't heard in a while. Not a bad deal for $250, but alas, what would I do with this?

Thursday, July 24, 2008

Socal Python Piggies

Long carpool from work brought Abhi, Stephen and me to the lovely town of Pasadina, where we found street parking right across the street from Caltek, and proceeded to walk a short distance to room 101 in K...?? whatever, the meeting was great, there was talk about some software that finds duplicates really fast using NginX connected to Quixote.

Clint Bidlack: "Using Nginx with multiple Quixote servers via WSGI"; Grig Gheorghiu: "Encrypted backups to Amazon S3 using boto and duplicity"

Socal Python Piggies was worth the long carpool.

LAX

Our new office will have an airport view, if you really get in the right corner of the right office, not mine though. The building next to it is the one with the stunning views, we just get a little place that makes for a cool vista.

aging changes

BT is tearing up its parking lot. Could they be installing those solar panels they have signs for everywhere?
Another year has gone by and my office bought me a cake, I still have a square of it in the fridge at home.

We are measuring and moving soon. Too much to do.

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Uverse?

So ATT puts up a new cabinet on the curb, I am guessing we might have Uverse soon? ATT, as far as I know brings fiber to the curb, and then cooper to the home, unlike Verizon FiOS which is all fiber, to the home.

Compressed air

fixes a mac mouse scroll, which I assume was full of dead skin or dust as it is also known.

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Follow up later

there is too much on the internet, I have to leave some great sites that I learn about for later. On CNBC a great interview with T Boone Pickens gives me a site to explore about his solution for the oil price. Jack tells me about a great new app that runs on his iPhone and my N95 that lets you call on WiFi, all great stuff, but alas, only time to blog it and when do I actually read about all this as I race off to the office? I need to take the bus, would give me another 10 min to read things that are left on the laptop. So sometimes I blog things that matter to me and I need to come back to later, or will tell others about, least I forget.

Saturday, July 19, 2008

too much stuff

Sorry if I don't blog, but we have been on Skype conferences, thinking about Open for Biz, Linux OPen taps, take the order once you have the attention of the user and if my post makes now sense, sorry... still sleepless.

Friday, July 18, 2008

LampSig.org

Solomon gave us another great talk at LampSIG.org about MaatKit this time. Solves many of the problems that MySQL should, some of that extra admin stuff they don't have a solution for.

JibJab

I always enjoy an email from JibJab, but this time they outdid themselves.
Send a JibJab Sendables® eCard Today!

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

walked to work today

Like every summer the sky is falling in the stock market. But this one it is worst, we are in a pain we have never felt, got to admit that it sucks being long and that the sky is truly falling, so get it over with and sell everything.

Monday, July 14, 2008

VoIP phones, Windows dependancies.

After using many VoIP solutions over the years I have some ideas about what features I want in my VoIP: easy to use, reliable, works from anywhere, behind any NAT, has critical mass so you that you can find many other users on it, free calls between users, presence, IM, video nice, but not really needed in most cases, interoperates with the other solutions out there so you don't all have to be on the same provider. It would also be very nice if it was an open system where anyone could participate, but that sometimes does create quality problems.

Seems to me that Skype is the one closest to filling all of these features. The ones they don't fill are

I have also been thinking about the things that I can only do in Windows: my Nokia N95 software and the Skype USB cordless phone, I wish I had drivers for those 2, they are one of the few things I can't do in Ubuntu these days.

Sunday, July 13, 2008

iMadness

I was there last year in that long line waiting to get my hands on an iphone, the line went all around Macy's, just as this year, but I didn't take part. It was fun, Apple would come around and give you water bottles, Islands Resturant would take orders from the line and deliver food. We ate at an Italian place on Rosecrans instead, pretty good food, nice ambiance, moderately expensive.

Saturday, July 12, 2008

will it blend

I bet you the SEO on this company is through the roof, I have been aware of them for a while. This will it blend campian is really brilliant and they are right there in line getting one of the first iPhones and blended it right away. Free buzz, cheap advertising, cool. Maybe filming Todd at the datacenter in a gorilla suit isn't such a bad idea.

Friday, July 11, 2008

moving sucks

getting nothing done, pretty much working on a move, what a waste of time, doesn't get more forward.

Internet at T3 speeds

So we have T3 speeds for the new office, but the install date may be a month late, oh well, they need 3 months to install a T3 and 4.5 for a 100Mb ethernet delivered service, quite frankly we should have moved to the other side of the airport where we could get a $100 cross connect for $4/Mb bandwidth, sweet. Cheaper rent too. I went to the Alchemy data center again to check out an IAX2 phone. Seemed better quality then GrandStream, you can reconfigure SIP accounts or IAX2 accounts without rebooting and they are really rather cool. I would totally buy a 12 of them for the office, but will have to talk to our VP of tech. I am ready to setup service with Voxlinesystems, been trying them out for a year now, seems to be decent service, not oversubscribed.

Frantic call from Steve sent me a picture of the Doc house in Vegas, little faucet in the bathroom ruined the house 100K in damage estimated, interesting, glad it isn't my house. I used to house sit for someone, not a bad deal for them, this kind of stuff can happen and will happen.

Tuesday, July 8, 2008

SEO Meetup

Last nights SEO meetup wasn't very well attended, but the loft it was in had a stunning view of Los Angeles, up on the 12 floor of the American Concentrate building, a pretty cool place, right on McArthor park by Korea town. Not the most gentle neighbor hood, but our car was still there with 4 wheels when we left around 9:30, it was also a pretty good talk of how to get your website up in the ratings. I learned that I have an average page rank in Google, 3, that SEOquake gives you all kinds of info on your page, heard about backlinks and thier importance in getting your website up in the ratings. I heard about some paid ways in getting your website up again, we went into an adwords account and looked at an example of hydrolics repair San Diego, and discussed that adwords are not purly paid. It was a pretty good night, plus 2 cats would run around and make provide entertainment in a visually stunning place, one very large room with windows looking East and South, amazing penthouse, probably has a waiting list. Anyhow thanks Alex for organizing.

Sunday, July 6, 2008

slow computers

I actually have no idea what the fireworks in l Segundo were like, I spent the time trying to get 2 computers working in Redondo beach, 2 days of training and getting data backed up and working again. On one computer I went for Ubuntu 8.04, something that seems to be easier to do every day, rather then fix Windows 2000, on the other I replaced Norton AV with Avast which is a new one for me, but I shall try it out on my own computer as well, since I can get a free download, for personal use :) It is amazing how many companies are engaged in the problem of solving Windows vulnarabilites. Seems to me that changing to a more obscure OS is an easy solution, but then, you can't run as much software, tradeoffs. So a Skype call and a cool tech support video, time to work on the next blog I guess, so much to do.

Friday, July 4, 2008

independance day

Anthony Bourdain is a genius of TV hosting with his Travel Channel program No Reservations. I have been watching him for a year, and he gets better with time. I really enjoyed Namibia, Indonesia and the boarder with Mexico, looking forward to Shanghai this afternoon, when I can get some more time with company to watch it. There is a trip to China in my future, could be this summer, if I can get the time off and the airlines are desperate for passengers, so far the prices I have seen are astronomical, and what would I expect for the Olympics and summer when oil is at record prices. Actually, maybe I will just look forward to spending the summer alone and for once sleep, not that this is a quiet neighborhood with the airplanes taking off every minutes, sometimes we have neighbors drunk, and other times there is the Harley setting off the car alarm, ahhhh.... I wish I had a countryside house for this weekend.

So Anthony in Indonesia is talking about going bamboo, which is a term for people who didn't go home. I may do that some day in China, meanwhile, here in California, did I do that here? I guess I wasn't born here, yet this is home now.

Thursday, July 3, 2008

Is Google making us stupid?

Today I spent most of the day talking to vendors about internet access. I would really rather like a simple proposition like move into this building and get 100Mb/$600 as Cogent seems to offer, although with me they are talking about 100Mb/$1000, well enough delivered on Ethernet would be cheap and great for our team of 10 people, in fact I don’t really know what we would do with all that bandwidth if we had it, yet, some of it will be VoIP and heck, we could host our own YouTube, but I digress.

I carpooled to work today, which when the CTO said, go home have fun, I had to admit that I carpooled to work, yea, very inconvenient time consuming and unless I replace my gas car with an electric one, with solar panels, I don’t really see how this whole $5 gas thing is going to change our ways, we are addicted to cheap gas, and trust me even at twice the price it is still cheaper then the alternatives, that are basically very immature technologies at this point.

So on the ride home, in a Prius, I get out early to see the farmers market/green fair on Main St, cool, got a 60W CFB and they will still let me sell them my fridge  Socal Edison has some cool programs to reduce consumption, rather then increase capacity, right idea.

So I end up at the library and walk by the magazine rack, could help but grab anything with Google in the title, so the idea is that we don’t think the way we used too, can’t read lengthy articles, rather get quickly distracted. I have to say that I don’t often read Atlantic, but the July/August issue is really great, this article does speak to me and is well written. And although I have a laptop at the library, I can’t use the internet, because it is too much trouble, so here I am reading, and typing this blog post.

So the article goes to talk about all kinds of things, but true to the article, I just started skimming and finally went on the next one, I don’t have a long attention span either. Yes, my brain is different because of Google. So we can’t divide anymore, the next generation will need a computer with internet at all times. Actually so do I. Time to go home and plug in.

As I walk out the library I glance at the wireless sign again, and then on the way home all the flags in the lawn remind me that it is almost July 4th. I guess the real estate agents’ want to buy houses as they don’t put flags in my street where people clearly don’t own houses, since it is all rentals. Hmmm… that seems backwards. So I get home and the power fails, wow, that isn’t something that happens in the first world, but then our inflation and shortages might as well be 3rd world. We even have a credit crunch. What next? A revolution?

So now the power is back on, the TV on Fast Money, inflation special, and I am on WiFi again, so much for reading magazines.