BrockLi Soup

Has anyone figured out how to download pics from viewmymessage.com? I really want to keep some of these pictures people have sent me, but I can’t figure out any way to get them out besides taking a screen shot of the thumbnail they show there.

Also, what are the chances that MMS support will be added with an iPhone software or firmware update? That seems like the kind of thing that could be added without needing new hardware, and something a lot of people would appreciate.

I did some shuffling around on the server this afternoon, so please let me know if you find anything that’s broke. Thanks!

Up until a version or two ago, I would just keep hitting Command+W as I finished reading tabs in Firefox, and when I closed the last one, the window would go away. I’m not sure why this doesn’t work anymore, but I just found out that Command+Shift+W will close the current window. It’s not as fluid as it used to be, but it makes me a lot happier than having to use the mouse or just using Command+H to hide the window until I need Firefox again. I figured I’d share, because I can’t be the only one who hadn’t figured this out.

Since moving down here a year ago, I’ve barely used my laptop, for two good reasons: my desktop is conveniently located in the living room (where I’ve always used my laptop the most), and I no longer have homework or projects to be working on when I’m away from my desktop.

At the new place, all three of us have our desktops lined up under my desk, and Matt and I have ours connected to Jym’s monitor, which he doesn’t use. Being the environmentally responsible kind of guy I am, I went to turn off the monitor before bed last night, and pushed the power button clear into the monitor casing. Not a big deal, I figured - I’ll take it apart and re-seat the button. Problem is, there doesn’t seem to be a way to open the damn thing.

It’s sort of a long way of saying that I’ve been forced to use my laptop exclusively for the past day, and I kind of like it. This damn thing cost me a fortune (two years ago now, but still), so I should be getting some use out of it. It’s survived two moves, a year and a half of classes, three jobs, and a big cup of water: it deserves a little lovin’ now and then.

In other news, Scrubs season 6 premiers tomorrow at 9 on NBC - don’t miss it!

I don’t know why I didn’t think to do more looking around before, but I’ve solved my wiki on a stick problem. Wikipedia has a comparison of wiki software, which includes a several that use flat-file databases.

As it turns out, DokuWiki works almost just like MediaWiki, in terms of formatting and revision history. In one of the config files, you specify the data directory, and it just works.

Unfortunately, it’s not a true wiki on a stick. It will run on any Windows machine right from the thumb drive; the instructions there use Uniform Server, which runs Apache, MySQL, and PHP right from the thumb drive. DokuWiki is installed in the www directory there, so I can run it anywhere I’ve got XP (or maybe 2000) and a USB port.

As I mentioned in my previous post, MAMP won’t run anywhere but /Applications/MAMP. Mark made the good point that I could create a symlink from the thumb drive to that directory (or vice versa? you know what I mean), but by that time I already had DokuWiki working and didn’t feel like spending more time on it. As such, MAMP runs on my iBook with a local install of DokuWiki that points to the data directory within the aforementioned www directory. Voila, everyone uses the same data, and I am appeased.

It isn’t as flexible as I was hoping, but I’m really only planning on using it in three places: my iBook, my home PC, and on rare occasions when I need to make a quick note, my work PC. I can’t run it on other Macs without installing and configuring MAMP and DokuWiki there, but for my purposes, this setup will serve me well.

Dear LazyWeb:

I want to share a MySQL database between two installations of PHP and MySQL on two different machines running at different times. Basically, I want a Wiki on a stick that I can run on Windows and my iBook. This is easy on Windows - just follow the instructions on the page linked there. Running a wiki on a Mac is unbelievably easy with MAMP.

The problem is pointing the both of them at the same MySQL data so I can update the info in either place. I can change the datadir in the MySQL config in MAMP, but it does me no good - MAMP has to be installed in /Applications/MAMP, or it just doesn’t work (it won’t even copy into other directories).

So I need to find another solution on the Mac, or a way to point the MAMP install of MySQL at an arbitrary directory. Anyone managed to do this?

Also, a couple notes:

• This isn’t a real LazyWeb request, since I’ve spent about 8 hours dicking around with this over the past few weeks. That’s not too lazy….right?
• I know about Tiddlywiki, but it’s not going to scale the way I want it to. This is going to be a big wiki and I don’t want it relying on having lots and lots of JavaScript in memory (their homepage made Firefox complain about running too long). I’d be open to other wiki systems (file based DB, maybe?) if they have the features of MediaWiki (revision history, mostly).
• I know I could just run this on the PC desktop and connect to it like any other website, but I’d like to keep it on the thumb drive if I can.

Any ideas are welcome.

Know what sucks? Scheduling bill payments on your bank’s site and realizing that it’s going to be another tight week. So, I cancelled my phone bill payment.

I got a landline when I moved in for two reasons: I have an old Series 1 TiVo with a modem, and I didn’t want salespeople and such calling my cell phone. I figured I would get more use out of it than a couple pizza orders and calls from charity muggers, but no such luck. I love TiVo, but it wasn’t worth $46 a month.

I ordered a TurboNet NIC from 9thTee.com, and it came in today. I couldn’t believe how easy it was to install the damn thing - I was done in about half an hour. It would have been 20 minutes, but I put it all back together without reconnecting the power cable (whoops), so I had to pull everything back out.

It was about $75 after shipping - more than the phone bill, but it will pay for itself quick.

Before I even bought my iBook, I knew that one of the first things I would install would be NetNewsWire. At that point, I only read a few blogs, but I’d heard marvelous things about NNW from at least a couple of them and decided it was time to try an RSS reader. I fell in love with it when I learned the keyboard shortcuts - I don’t like using the mouse more than I have to, especially when I’ve only got a track pad at my disposal. For the first several weeks down here in VA, I didn’t have wireless access or a router, so I almost never used the laptop. As such, I started using Google Reader.

I gave it a spin a few months ago when it was introduced, and imported all of my feeds from NNW. At the time, I didn’t care for the interface; it was slow, it mixed all the feeds together, and it didn’t have the keyboard shortcuts that I had come to love about NNW. When my Windows machine became the only one I was using regularly, I decided it was time to give it another shot.

This time around, I found Reader to be far more usable. It turns out, there ARE keyboard shortcuts - I’m not sure if I just didn’t see the list of them at the bottom of the screen, or if they were added since I tried it last, but I’ve learned to use them nonetheless.

I’ve also come too appreciate the single list of items. In NNW, there were more than a dozen feeds I almost never read, because I would always start with some of my favorites and run out of time or interest before I got to the “boring” feeds. Now, with every feed combined, I get a nice variety - news mixed with humor mixed with photos. I almost never read any of the news feeds before because there were always some blog posts that looked more interesting. I’ve learned to skim headlines and only read the posts that catch my attention and breeze past the rest, so I’m actually getting through more feeds than I used to, and keeping closer tabs on those “boring” news feeds.

It’s also nice that Reader is web-based. I had tried another web-based reader before - Bloglines, maybe? - because I wanted something I could use on any machine. I could have found a decent Windows reader, but then I’d be sifting through looking for new content any time I moved between my two computers. I needed a single account that would keep track of what I had read. Unfortunately, the interface on the one I tried was terrible, and I figured I wouldn’t find much better. Now that I have wireless and use both computers at my apartment, the web-based solution makes the most sense. Furthermore, I can use it at work; I’ll flip through a few headlines while waiting for a compile to finish.

As always, though, life isn’t all sunshine and puppies: this week, Reader has been reporting a lot of errors and occasionally refuses to load. I thought it might have something to do with my long list of feeds, so I went through the arduous task of removing some feeds I don’t read or don’t exist anymore - arduous because of obscene load times - and cut my list down to 81 feeds. Things seem to be going better - not great, but better. I was hoping that my woes would all be silenced by trimming the fat a little, but I’m starting to think that the Reader team may be working on things. A cursory glance at the Reader Group suggests that the team is working on the site, as these issues are being widely reported. At this point I’d say it’s usable, but it will get frustrating before long.

Another issue mentioned often in the Group, and one I’ve seen myself, is the inability to unsubscribe from feeds. You can click “unsubscribe” as many times as you want, and it will disappear from your subscription list, but posts may continue to appear in the reading list. It seems to be a caching issue, as the feed’s items will stop appearing sooner or later, but it’s frustrating to keep deleting something that just won’t go away.

Reader is not without it’s flaws. It serves my purposes well, and isn’t so critical that occasional downtime bothers me. I’m confident that the service will improve over time - as all Google products do - and I’ll probably be using it for a long time to come. After all, GMail has been my primary account for a year and a half now, and it’s only gotten better. I’d recommend it to anyone who reads content that’s available in RSS or Atom, but give them a week to get things running right again.

Addendum: Enlarging the text totally screws up the view.

Thanks to JR, I found out about Microsoft’s recent introduction of Visual Studio Express Editions (as far as I can tell, it was earlier today) (well, yesterday, now). Basically, they’re lightweight versions of Visual Studio targeted at newbies. I decided that ASP would be my next programmatic venture and I keep meaning to find out what all the fuss is about .NET, so I’m hoping that these Express Editions live up to the lofty claims Microsoft has made about them.

I downloaded the Web Developer installer (or rather, installer downloader - I hate when they do that), but didn’t really have a chance to play with it once it finally finished downloading everything I needed for it. It has a built-in test server, so you can play with ASP applications right on your desktop. The part I’m most interested in is the tutorials, videos, and code samples, because I learn best by seeing actual code. Well, actual code with a little direction tossed in to get me started - sifting through uncommented code in a foreign language won’t get you anywhere.

I loaded it up and played for a couple minutes, but the interface isn’t as intuitive as one might hope. It’s pretty similar to VB 6, so I had a rough good idea of what was going on. However, I’m not familiar with any ASP elements, which dominate the left side (turns out, that Radio Button is no ordinary radio button - it’s an ASP Radio Button!)

Hopefully, I’ll find some time to go through the tutorials this weekend. I really do want to learn ASP, because it seems that a lot of companies use it after all. I’ve got Visual Studio 2005 Professional (thanks to the MSDN Academic Alliance), so I could start “for real,” but the Express version is fully compatible and I’m hoping it will offer more in the way of introduction. Come Thursday, the real meat of my quarter will be over, so I should be able to find some free time for playing after that.

I find that classes have a way of taking all the fun out of everything. I enjoy programming, but when I have to do it for a class, I put it off. Most of the time, this isn’t because I dislike the subject matter. I took Web Client Side Programming, and had a blast doing the JavaScript projects. In another class, half of the coursework for one class focused on PHP. I loved PHP, and I still do, but I dreaded the projects because they just weren’t interesting. I credit Dan Bogaard for my interest in JavaScript, because he left things open-ended enough to keep them interesting. In so many classes, the subject matter is trivialized and turned into busy work.

Every time I pick up a project on my own, I’m reminded how much I really like programming and learning new languages. When I’m doing it for myself, I can set the requirements and find new and interesting things to do. Even for “real” projects I’ve done, where I DON’T define the requirements, I have a lot more fun, because the requirements aren’t “use at least two of the following: cookies, sessions, SOAP, blah blah blah.”

I tend to go for long strethes where I won’t do any coding because it invokes classroom flashbacks. Every once in a while, I muster the courage to jump back into the fray, and find myself putting off classwork to do the “real” learning on my own projects. Really, I should have kept myself constantly busy for the past four years so I wouldn’t forget how much I like programming.

I mention all this because I picked up a technical book today for the first time in months. Only a geek would think of Beginning XML as pleasure reading. Even though I’ve never used it, I thought I understood XML. Today I was wandering around the library and noticed how much real estate was devoted to it, and thought I might have been mistaken. So far, I haven’t read anything I didn’t know, but I’m only through chapter 1 (”What is XML?”).

I have to wonder if four years and countless thousands of dollars in student loans were necessary to get where I am. I’d like to think that the diploma gives me some credibility, and classes taught me how to learn (to some extent), but I’ve always learned best when I teach myself. I can’t let myself forget again how much I enjoy teaching myself things, because I’ve still got a lot left to learn (next on my list: this .NET business everyone is so worked up about).

There is WAY too much information out there.

For the most part, this isn’t a problem. The more the merrier, right? Wikipedia is certainly a lot more useful when it’s full of information.

The problem is the fact that I feel the need to consume it all, to read and watch and listen and process until I have a grasp on everything and know a little bit about all of it. I try to spend some time reading every day, both online and in dead-tree media, to keep up on current events, and every day, my stack of new magazines seems a little taller, and the number of unread posts in my news reader is a little higher. I know I can’t possibly take in everything that comes my way, but I’ve always had an overwhelming desire to know what’s going on.

Internet Anxiety Disorder first came to my attention over SIX MONTHS AGO, about the same time Ryan found it. I’ve been meaning to comment on it ever since, but I always seem to have something to read.

My intent to articulate this was recently revived when I found a link (from somewhere) to an article by Bob Walsh: All The News Doesn’t Fit. Just a few days earlier, Google had introduced Google Reader. The introductory post on Google Blog said it best (though almost definitely not first): how is anyone “supposed to keep up with the fire hose of stuff launched from the web’s spigot?”

I like to be able to comment intelligently on the issues facing the world around me, and as such, I try to keep on top of things. I’ve been spending more time reading lately and feel like I’m getting a better grasp on things, but it never slows down. Currently:

• I have a half-dozen unread Wired magazines laying around.
• There are around 30 non-technical, just-for-fun type books on my shelf. I’ve read about half of them, maybe.
• I’m currently reading two books. I’m an incredible 75 pages into the one I started a couple months ago.
• I have 104 RSS feeds in my news reader, totaling 559 unread posts right now.
• I’ve been keeping a list of movies I want to see since around August 2003 (I think). It currently features 217 titles. In 2004, I watched 129 movies, and just 71 so far this year, so that’s around two years worth of movies I need to catch up on.
• The text file with the list of movies also has 94 books that I’ve read ABOUT, and want to actually read.
• Back in February, I started posting things to del.icio.us with the ‘toRead’ tag, when I found something interesting but didn’t have time to read it immediately. There are now 306 pages with that tag.

I feel like I’m missing out when I hear people talking about the latest book - two good examples are The Tipping Point and Freakonomics , both old news by now - but I’ve accepted the fact that I’ll never be able to keep up on it all. Yesterday, I started reading The Influentials (which I owned for TWO YEARS before finally starting) and thought this summed it all up nicely:

The average American would have to read 334 books per day, go to 11,000 web sites per day, peruse 15 magazines per day, and tune into 29 radio stations every day for a year to see everything available to him or her - and that’s not counting the dozens of programs being beamed every day by the hundreds of television networks vying for viewers’ attention.

I haven’t even tried to address TV, which has only gotten worse with the recent acquisition (and subsequent upgrade) of TiVo. I watch Simpsons or Aqua Teen Hunger Force when I feel like I need a break from consuming all the print media I need to get to.

There’s a lot out there, and it just keeps coming. I know I can’t possibly get all of it, but I feel like I’m missing something if I don’t at least catch the major stuff. I’ve learned to be very suspicious of anyone who seems to be on top of it all - they are clearly unemployed and don’t require sleep.

I just finished (finally!) updating my TiVo with a 160 GB drive I found at CompUSA for just $30 after rebates. I bought it a couple weeks ago, but got frustrated with it after messing around for a couple hours. You have to take an image from the original drive(s) to get the OS and settings, then write the image to the new drive. I was having problems getting my machine to recognize the two TiVo drives so I could pull the data off.

If you want to do it, the directions are available online, but don’t follow them word for word. I couldn’t get my machine to recognize the drives in the configuration they recommend - most of the commands were different, since the drives weren’t attached where the author’s said they would be. I learned a few things about Linux mounts in the process though, and it all worked out.

We now have a TiVo with lifetime service and 45 hours at best quality - 160 at basic. And BP just bought a big TV a couple weeks ago - what more could a man want?

When the computer won’t boot, take one drink.

When the computer doesn’t make it past POST, take two drinks.

When the new motherboard you buy doesn’t fit in the case, take a couple more drinks.

When the next motherboard you buy has a no-return policy, cross your fingers and do a few shots.

When it works on the first try, cry a little bit and move your drink away from the open case.

I was planning on using part of this week’s paycheck to buy some RAM for my iBook. I’ve barely used the thing in the past six months, and I figured that it could be attributed to the fact that it’s hard to do much on a machine with only 256 MB of memory.

Realistically, the problem is co-op. I used my laptop all the time in class, either taking notes or wasting time when I was bored. Working full time for the past six months, I haven’t had much time or inclination to just dick around online or do much programming on the side. I feel kind of guilty neglecting the expensive toy that I spent almost a year paying off.

On the other hand, I haven’t been using my desktop much either. I don’t know if it’s because I spend all day on a computer at work or because I’ve been getting out more, but I’ve been spending significantly less time reading blogs and passing the time online like I used to.

I hardly think this is a bad thing; most people I know at RIT could certainly stand to spend less time at a monitor. On one hand, I’d say it’s good for me, because I’ve been spending less time sitting in my room and more time with people. Conversely, I need to find a real job soon, and should really be spending more time working on projects to beef up my portfolio.

My passion for technology and programming fell off a couple years ago, but I’m just now starting to notice it’s effects only my daily life. I still want to do IT for a living, but I don’t see it as a hobby any more.

I was pretty impressed with the signature white iPod ear buds when I first got the thing, and I’ll admit, I felt cool wearing them. I expected them to be tinny like every other pair of ear buds I’ve tried, but the frequency range wasn’t bad. They do a decent job of blocking outside noise, and other people can barely hear them even when the iPod’s cranked.

My problem with them is a simple matter of engineering: the wire going into the ear bud isn’t secured. Well, it is, but not where it should be. The wire goes up into this tube that comes off the bottom of the buds and it connects up in there somewhere. Unfortunately, the wire isn’t affixed to this tube, and it has just enough room to move around a little bit. This usually isn’t a problem, but if I’ve got the iPod in my hand or I’m walking with a particularly bouncy gait, the wire swings back and forth, causing it to collide ever so lightly with the inside of the tube. Since this tube is connected to the body of the ear bud, it resonates nicely in my ear canal.

It can be irritating, but it’s easy to ignore. I’ve got a decent pair of Sony headphones, but they’re the big, puffy, DJ style, so they won’t fit nicely in my pocket or bag (another benefit of the ear buds).

It’s not enough of a problem to warrant another headphone expenditure. For the time being, I think I’ll just walk in time to the music so I don’t notice it.