November 01, 2006

Building a WMD

The WMD, aka Weichbrodt Media Display, aka Weapon of Mass Distraction.

In moving to St. Louis, we've somehow marched backwards in time in regard to Cable TV technology. Whereas Comcast , for all that I hated it , did in fact offer an HD DVR that I could rent for $10/mo, the otherwise enlightened Charter offers no DVR at all. This has caused great wailing and gnashing of teeth in the Weichbrodt house. As is my custom, I've examined the issue and offer the following analysis.

Fundamentally, there are three models for distributing media content out right now.

  1. Old Media: Get your shows through a provider. Cable, Satellite, Over-the-air. This is the traditional model.
  2. New Media: Purchase your shows through an internet distributor. iTunes, Amazon, Real, etc. Tech companies trying to bridge the gap between where consumers are and where pop content is currently published.
  3. Free Media: Share your shows via the internet. RSS, Bittorrent. Pay for bandwidth, share what you will.

Unfortunately, the content is different across the three models. Watching the Champions League match between Barcelona and Chelsea live can only be done using Old Media, while watching House can be done with all three, and watching Rocketboom can only be done with New Media & Free Media.

These models are leaky--there is overlap between what iTunes and what RSS cover, for example. Just rough models, then.

The second background item is timeshifting. The ability to watch a show despite when/where it was first released. Tivo is a popular way to do this to content from Old Media. RSS may be timeshifted due to its very definition. The trick is, some ways of timeshifting lag. Tivo doesn't lag--as soon as the show starts, Tivo lets you timeshift. Bittorrent has a (comparitely) huge lag: a show must be broadcast, captured, encoded, and fully shared before viewing may begin.

I've built a spreadsheet of my options. Comment back with what you think I should do.

Posted by Noel at 08:41 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

May 26, 2006

Further Pimping the OLPC Project

The $100 Laptop project demoed some final-ish models this week. I've mentioned this project, and it's potential, before. Sell cheap laptops to poor schoolkids in developing countries, kill the digital divide. Very interesting, very cool.

Posted by Noel at 04:59 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

May 04, 2006

I Love Programming, but I Hate Configuring

Dammit Jim, I'm a programmer, not a configurator. Microsoft needs to stop making me spend as much time configuring its products as I do programming them.

Yes, I'm looking at you, SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services. Reporting Services Configuration Manager is only half a solution.

Everyone else: let me do easy and gratifying things immediately, and difficult things shortly thereafter. Consider iLife your holy grail. There is no step 3.

That is all. You may return to your homes.

Posted by Noel at 05:33 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

April 27, 2006

When Wikis Suck and Don't Suck For Law Firms

After posting about why wikis suck for law firms, I'm finding my concerns both ignored, addressed, and transcended. But one use of wikis that I did not consider was to do cross-firm collaboration on legal matters. Thanks to Evan Schaeffer for promoting this to my attention.

I have also had a little more experience with wikis since my original post, and would like to modify my thoughts regarding their use. Mainly, wikis work best when they create a resource for a group, rather than replace, supplant, or build off of existing resources.

That's my experience with smaller (< 100) groups using wikis. When your group is greater than 100 (eg wikipedia), then the criteria shifts to making a resource organized and accessible for the entire group. Hence, for small wikis in a traditional law firm environment, wikis won't create original resource (in most cases. I’ll examine the exceptional cases, where wikis could create a resource, in a later post.).

Here’s a red herring: ”We don't do wikis because we have no control over them.” Control may be distracting, but its not a worthwhile objection. All but the most Enron of places want to leverage the skillsets of their employees. Sorry, that's my attempt at corporatese. Anyway, once you frame social software in terms of knowledge management and project collaboration, the red herring of control dries up.

Posted by Noel at 05:36 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 18, 2006

Impressive List of Languages Ported to .NET Runtime

As Worf would say, most impressive.

A couple of thoughts. First, if you are designing stuff for the long term, going with one of these ports (eg a non-.NET-native language) should be considered. You always have the native runtime to fall back on. The reverse is true of C# thanks to Mono. Second, the .NET programming stack may now be officially certified as robust. Haters now dismissed, lesson over.

Posted by Noel at 05:32 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

April 12, 2006

You Will Try to Take It With You

Your technology, that is. Further proof that society isn't modern, nor is it advanced. Heaven knows how my PowerBook functions as a security blanket. Ask my wife about sharing the bed at night.

Regarding such uncomfortable arrangements, there's a vague twist in the belief of the South Africans in both the witch doctor's spells and in technology's saving power. I suppose my dismissal of their perspective says more about my faith in technology than their faith in spells. It's silly to ask the question of whether science and faith coexist. They do. Just look. Imagining from such an assertion, technology and miracles are equally mysterious, and become less so through intensive study. Neal Stephenson pointed out in one of his books that geeks became priests in the Middle Ages just as naturally as they do hackers now.

Both professions realize that you can't take it with you. Fie on the materialism of the consumer and the metaphysicist.

Posted by Noel at 05:35 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 07, 2006

Professorial Podcasting

...as if members of academia needed another outlet for their blowhard bloviating. And I mean that nicely.

Last week I noticed iTunes introduced a selection of class lectures from Stanford profs, along with other silly university marketing content. I listened to a discussion on whether philosophy is the handmaiden or queen of the sciences with Peter Godfrey-Smith, guesting from Harvard University. Not a terribly stimulating session, but the potential is there for exposing your pedagogy and advancing your thinking in a way that is both hip and accessible.

Stanford is the first university to take advantage of Apple opening up iTunes for free hosting and distribution of college/university content. Josiah, I know that you were working on something like this for some Covenant faculty. Perhaps a setup like Profcast could assist in getting that off the ground--between Profcast and the new iTunes U, you have the recording, editing, hosting, and distribution of content, close to maximally automated.

Posted by Noel at 05:39 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

January 26, 2006

Find the Next Arbitrary Day of the Week in T-SQL

I'm pretty proud of this little beastie. I'm also pretty sure that it can be reduced a bit, but not right now. Fire up your T-SQL enviroments!

DECLARE @desiredDate datetime

SET @desiredDayOfWeek = 4 --& Let's find, oh, Tuesdays. I like Tuesdays, usually.

SET @desiredDate = DATEADD(dd, ((DATEPART(ww, DATEADD(ww, 1, GETDATE())) - DATEPART(ww, DATEADD(dd, 7%((@desiredDayOfWeek - DATEPART(dw, GETDATE())) + 7), GETDATE()))) * 7) + (-1 * (DATEPART(dw, GETDATE()) - @desiredDayOfWeek)), GETDATE())

Whee!

Posted by Noel at 05:32 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

January 12, 2006

The 3000 Day Web Page

Don Knuth wants to know what he needs to do in order to ensure his web page is readable for the next 3000 days. His old (and curious) DTD for his web site was , which he has used and validated since 1996 (!!!). That DTD was deprecated recently by the W3C, and now Mr. Knuth wants to know if he must sacrifice a week otherwise spent toiling on his life's work to the vagaries of the W3C's fashionista Web 2.0 policies.

Turns out there are two issues. First, Knuth was using an old-and-busted, non-standard DTD that wasn't even available on the web anymore (which means any new web browser would not be able to guarentee support). One point from Mr. Knuth. Second, the validator folks removed the DTD without notification, when they knew that the DTD would work most of the time and was pretty close to other, standard DTDs. One point from Web Standards.

What did I learn? Standards are not possible at the beginning of something new, but they need to happen, and when they come, make the compliance process as friendly, verbose, and easy as possible.

Kudos to Dare Obsanjo for spotting and blogging this thread.

Posted by Noel at 05:32 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 03, 2006

Questions on a Tuesday

I'm back, and ready to begin the 2006 blogging campaign. We'll catch up with other things later. For now, I have some questions.

First Question.

What ever happened to distributed peer-based digital signatures and public keys using webs of trust? I am reading The Code Book, and today at lunch hit the chapter on the development of public-key crypto and the saga of Phil Zimmerman. I remember quite a fuss in the mid-90s about cypherpunks bootstrapping a decentralized trusted-key infrastructure. It seems quite relevant and do-able today. Has that project met demise and failed to get off?

Next question.

Has anybody done thinking on the epistemological criteria of encryption systems? Is there a formulation for knowledge wandering around which includes encryption? The history of crypto has seen a succession of knowledge-claims about the unbreakability of systems, and a matching set of persuasive counter-examples. Is there work in this area of philosophy? Additionally, what is the status of encrypted information? Is it knowledge, and what affect does the encryption state have on status?

Last question.

In day-to-day practice, I've supplanted my previous criteria for precise knowledge (being able to ask a good enough question that I can get a useful answer from someone knowledgeable) with the criteria "be able to formulate a Google search query which returns the desired information." Is that wrong? What is the qualitative difference between the two?

Please answer below, or in trackbacks. I exist to be enlightened by someone other than myself.

Posted by Noel at 05:36 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

December 06, 2005

Wikis Suck For Serious Business

We've been kicking around using wikis as ad-hoc KM/collaboration tools for the firm. My boss and I discussed it at a bit of depth on a fine sunny day this last summer as we drove to one of our other offices. We both concluded that, as they stand, wikis are not ready for the sort of use we want out of them.

He made two points. One, current wiki UI is not lawyer-friendly. WikiWords are stupid, especially to a profession who trades in fine wordings. HTML-like markup and syntax are usable for only those who are already geeky enough to know the real deal. Once you can get the UI of a wiki to the level of Word, then we can talk. Hmmm, I smell open source project idea. Two, wikis are knowledge sinkholes. Getting data into them is kinda easy (see One), but getting data out of them is hard. I know Jotspot is working on that, for one, but when you are trading in PDFs and Word docs, XML export doesn't cut it (at least not currently).

I made a single point that sort of gets at both of his. Wikis are great for ad-hoc arrangement and re-arrangement of data, but they don't respect existing data. And with 2-million-plus documents in dozens of formats sitting in our document management system, we need to respect existing data. Wikis will be useful to the extent they enable us to re-use, remix, reorganize, review, and extend those documents. What is needed is a wiki that is created, edited, and saved in Word.

Posted by Noel at 05:38 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

November 29, 2005

A Force More Powerful?

My little brother bought me Rise of Nations for my birthday. Strategy & simulation games, a la Sid Meier, are my thing. We happily conquered the world together as the Russians over Thanksgiving. In Soviet Russia, the Weichbrodt boys are belong to all your base!

But what happens when you lose the tanks and add student protestors? A Force More Powerful. Wired News dropped the name on me via an interview with one of the game's consultants, who founded the Serbian student organization that helped bring down Milosevic in the 90's. Not quite like a video game designed by Gandhi or MLK, but more like a didactic and fun subversion of a genre, like A Young Ladies Illustrated Primer. The name echoes what that silly rock star Bono said at the beginning of the year. "How do you dismantle an atomic bomb? With love." Like the saying, I'm not sure if the game is a hippy dream or a useful tool.

Posted by Noel at 05:38 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 03, 2005

A Modest Proposal to the Librarian of Congress

Submission Information


Proposed class or classes of copyrighted work(s) to be exempted:

Motion Pictures, Software, Audio Recordings, and Digital Text.

Brief summary of the argument(s) in support of the exemption proposed above:

These classes of works (Motion Pictures, Software, Audio Recordings, and Digital Text) have traditionally been granted copyrights for the purpose of encouraging the public dissemination of the works for the benefit and use of the public by providing a property incentive to the originator for a short period of time. The DMCA ignores this traditional cause of granting a copyright, and moreover establishes crippling restrictions on the aforementioned "benefit and use of the public". As such, the DMCA's use should be restricted to the text of the DMCA itself, with the consequence being that any private party which attempts to discern the workings of the DCMA with the intent to apply it in any broader fashion outside of the text of the Act itself would be committing a punishable, criminal action under the DMCA.

Just an idea ;)
I am awaiting a response from the LoC.
Found via Slashdot.

Thank you!

The following information was submitted to the U.S. Copyright Office at 17:35 on 11/3/05. Please print this page for your records.

[I have read the notice of inquiry and acknowledge that my attached submission will be posted on the Copyright Office website.]: Acknowledged

[Name]: Noel Weichbrodt

[Title]: Application Developer

[Organization]:

[Street Address]: The Volunteer Building

[Address Line 2]:

[City]: Chattanooga

[State]: TN

[ZIP]: 37402

[Phone]: 4237858262

[Fax]:

[Submitter's email]: nweichbrodt millermartin com

[Proposed class or classes of copyrighted work(s) to be exempted]: Motion Pictures, Software, Audio Recordings, and Digital Text.

[Brief summary of the argument(s) in support of the exemption proposed above]: These classes of works (Motion Pictures, Software, Audio Recordings, and Digital Text) have traditionally been granted copyrights for the purpose of encouraging the public dissemination of the works for the benefit and use of the public by providing a property incentive to the originator for a short period of time. The DMCA ignores this traditional cause of granting a copyright, and moreover establishes crippling restrictions on the aforementioned "benefit and use of the public". As such, the DMCA's use should be restricted to the text of the DMCA itself, with the consequence being that any private party which attempts to discern the workings of the DCMA with the intent to apply it in any broader fashion outside of the text of the Act itself would be committing a punishable, criminal action under the DMCA.

[Attached file]: ExceptionProposal.doc

Posted by Noel at 05:38 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 02, 2005

SELECT * FROM work

I've spent the last few weeks hashing out some advanced (for me) T-SQL code. And actually, only T-SQL code. Which is odd for an Application Developer. Usually T-SQL code is written to read from or write to a database, which my apps, coded in another language (.NET-based usually) and targeted at another platform (Windows XP, Web, etc) will then call when they want to grab or put something in the database.

But this code is not such glue code, but instead a set of applications that live entirely in the database. Permit me an explanation.

My boss wrote a T-SQL email engine a couple of years ago that lets me construct and send an email entirely from T-SQL queries. I can also use plain-text or HTML or XML templates for the emails, and put the results of the T-SQL queries into them. The emails are constructed and sent using a pair of stored procedures, one for setting up the parameters of the email and the other for creating an email that uses those parameters. The email engine (a simple SQL Job) runs every five minutes, popping stuff off the incoming queue and sending it out.

The users get these emails courtesy of T-SQL, the humble behind-the-scenes workhorse of a language that just gets things done. Obviously they present a static view of the data, but I think it's interesting to deliver information, targeted and personalized to the highest possible degree using SQL cursors, directly to the user's inbox, which for most users is the single most watched and important node in their entire computer system. This is an interesting class of applications, ones who drop the usual Windows-based UI for one that is email-based and SQL-driven.

Posted by Noel at 05:05 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 25, 2005

My Kind of 3rd World Aid

The MIT Media Lab blows a lot of hot air, but occasionally gets into something interesting. Negroponte et al have designs for a $100 laptop to give to 15 million poor kids. Before you poo-poo it, think: the network is the computer. With built-in next-gen wi-fi, ad-hoc networking ability, and internet connection sharing, these laptops will wire together and together march onto the internet.

We're networking 15 million kids across the globe together.

The poor are defined as those who lack resources. Hey Brazillian street kid: here's 15,000,000 resources. Hey Honduran farmer kid: here's a thingy that can be the Farmer's Almanac, 21-century style. Hey Congolese orphan kid: here's a way to inform the planet about your situation and story, something that hasn’t been heard in over a hundred years.

This is The Young Ladies Illustrated Primer in real life.

$100 laptops + Social web + 15 million fresh faces? Technology that brings freedom. That's what I'm talking about.

Posted by Noel at 07:32 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 05, 2005

Why I Hate Comcast, and, By Proxy, The Entire Media/Communications Industry

In the last year, I've tried both Bellsouth and Comcast. Both suck. I pay through the nose and don't even get what I want.

Basically I want three things from all the pipes and waves coming into and emanating from my house. First, I want internet access at a reasonable-for-2005 speed. Second, I want to watch red-blooded American sports: football and basketball, at the college and professional levels. Third, I want to watch my blue-blood European sport: soccer, at the league and international levels. That's it.

In exchange for those services, I am prepared to pay, quite handsomely I think, the sum of $65 dollars. Near as I can figure, you could probably offer me a 256kbs internet connection, ESPN, and Fox Soccer, and meet the floor of my criteria for aforementioned cash. You could offer more (say Cox Sports channel, or NBA Season Ticket channels), or better (HDTV, faster 'net connection), and I could probably be convinced to pay a bit more, or just earn a good name.

Simple, right? A small bit of IP pipe, two TV channels, good service, and you've got me hooked for the rest of my foreseeable life. And hey, I'm flexible. You want to offer me Wi-Fi instead of landline broadband? I'm game. You want to deliver those two channels over copper instead of cable? Cool with me.

Sadly, this is not how the world works.

Instead of accepting the transaction terms outlined above, you, Mr. Cable Monopoly, are currently trying to offer me everything except what I want. So I am forced to enumerate what I do not want.

I don't care about The Disney Channel, or most other channels. I've had 300-channel cable, and all I got out of it was a profound depression. At those moments where I had time and inclination to sit down with the remote and the all-scrolling program guide, I would flip through the next 1.5 hours of programming for all of those 300 channels, bright-eyed with expectation and excitement at exploring the offerings of the largest, most well-funded entertainment industry the sum total of the entire Earth's efforts has produced, and inevitably conclude, "meh, there's nothing good on TV."

This is after flipping through screenful upon screenful of TVGuide listings, for fifteen minutes.

I don't care about landline phone service. I have a perfectly good cell phone that comes with many, many minutes that I pay dearly for. There is no reason for me to accommodate another ten digit number in my life.

I don’t care about most TV shows. The ones I watch, I can download anyways, and watch it (as Ryan pointed out) when I want, without commercial interruption.

Basically, I'm saying this: I know what I like, I find out what I like through means other than the TV, and I don't care that you, Mr. Cable Monopoly, offer me these 300-odd other channels that carry exactly nothing that I wish to watch.

My last point is that my demands could easily be met. I am basically asking for TV-on-demand, or at least a la carte cable, which is a death toll for many obtuse media business models and agreements. I am also asking to decouple TV from internet from phone, but still to offer all three. These are not new ideas. They are also eminently possible using technology that is at least five years old. But near as I can figure, these companies do not actually care about giving me what I want. I'm not even a selfish, crying baby to them. I'm just nameless, noiseless krill that gets sucked up and digested in their bloated primitive corporate entity.

So, in summary, I know what I want, neither Comcast nor Bellsouth nor Verizon give it to me, and in fact instead of giving me what I would like they instead give me exactly what I do no want, and this is all when they are fully capable of delivering what I want.

Posted by Noel at 05:16 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

September 22, 2005

Wanted: Titanium Powerbook G4 1Ghz w/Superdrive

What with Apple persistently not hitting my target specs for buying a new Powerbook, and my iBook growing creakier by the day, I rescheduled the old home technology plan. This puts me in the market for a nice used Powerbook G4. If you have any leads or tips, or you want to give your baby a good home as you move on, drop me a line. Meet my criteria, I have $1200 cash/check/whatever-you-want waiting for you.


If the Powerbook is missing a point from the criteria, I'm still interested, and we can negotiate a lower-value deal. Talk to me.

I've also taken the trouble of coming up with Noel's Uber-list of places to score sweet used Powerbooks. I'm meeting needs you never knew you had. You don't have to thank me.

As a side note, when does Chattanooga get a Craigslist?

[Update] No help from readers, but I did scoop this fine piece off Ebay and into a UPS crate headed my way. w00t.

Posted by Noel at 05:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 12, 2005

My Wife, The Geekess

I have been thrice-surprised this week by my wife's technological prowess, which I would like to believe is related to her marriage to me. I have a good causal argument for the third, but the first and second requires a bit of temporal jiggering.

First, she beat Mario World 2 on the original Gameboy as a kid. Nice. Using that, I can get in a few rounds of Halo 2.

Second, she was also the best shot in her house of three brothers on Duck Hunt from old-skool NES. Need I mention more as to why I am attracted to her?

But yes, there's a third. Glory hallelujah. We switched from DSL to cable for internet access. The cable guy came over while I was at work and she was home. I figure I would come home early and reconfigure my somewhat complicated home network setup to use the new pipe. What with the pipe going in to the D-Link 100mbs router, which routes the network share link, the wired computers, and the wireless router.

When I arrived home that muggy summer evening, I gave her a peck and scooted over to my iBook. Not thinking, I flipped it open and fired up Mail. To my surprise, new messages popped up. I tabbed to Safari and browed to Google. Yes, she configured the cable modem, and then the main router to use the modem, thus switching our network from DSL to cable, all in a couple of hours that afternoon.

I love that woman.

Posted by Noel at 05:32 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

August 09, 2005

The Partners, They Are A-Changin'

It occurs to me that I am working with perhaps the last generation of lawyers (and any other white-collar, services-based type of person) who are technologically disabled. When these guys (yes, males, as a rule, except for the few members of the pioneering generation of women in law) die off, there will be no one else to ask what 'copy and paste' means, or not be able to accomplish the same abstract task using different programs. I won't have to show another Of Counsel where the Reply button is located in Microsoft Outlook, having changed locations and icons from Lotus Notes. There will be no more web-based evaluations printed out, hand-filled, and sent across cities and time zones to the evaluation supervisor to input into the 'Internet'.

Heck, the amount of paper consumed by law firms everywhere will drop by 75%, at least. In my mind, there's the diminished, hoary, antediluvian lawyer who says to his young paralegal, "Do you know anything about this 'Internet', son? I heard Old Crotchitkins mention it to Knoobly-Knees at the [Ye Olde Closed-Membership] Clubb yester-evenin'. Said you could find out just about anything on it regarding my favorite pass-time of dominos. Also said that his son even found out the Anneballon's secret mint julep recipe. I've been trying to get that out of that son-of-a-gun for years." The bow-tied-one coughs. "Could you go and print out that 'Internet' for me so I can read up on it?"

But that just might be the last time that request is ever made. Strange to think that we might have to shift from dealing with an extreme lack of savvy to an extreme over-use of savvy, like those enterprising Stanford applicants who are now calling up their 2nd-tier schools. Just something to think about.

Posted by Noel at 05:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 03, 2005

RE: Completed WO# 7718 - Monitor will not move

From: Noel To: IT Subject: RE: Completed WO# 7718 - Monitor will not move

Alternate Resolution Suggestions:

8/3/2005 10:37:12 AM, Logged by: Noel Weichbrodt - Good.

8/3/2005 10:37:12 AM, Logged by: Noel Weichbrodt - Advised user to enter a growth spurt. Alternately, user may sit on a phone book. Reminded user that she serves technology, not the other way around. Things aren't supposed to be arranged for her convenience.

8/3/2005 10:37:12 AM, Logged by: Noel Weichbrodt - Cannot reproduce.

8/3/2005 10:37:12 AM, Logged by: Noel Weichbrodt - Monitors will not move if they do not respect you. Approach it slowly, bow deeply, and in your best language politely ask it, if it's not too much trouble, and you hesitate to even make a request as such being such an unworthy requestor, but if you please, perhaps, look a bit more down than presently.

8/3/2005 10:37:12 AM, Logged by: Noel Weichbrodt - Exodus 32:9: "'I have seen these [monitors]," the LORD said to Moses, "and they are a stiff-necked people.'"

8/3/2005 10:37:12 AM, Logged by: Noel Weichbrodt - If it moves again without user intervention, please evacuate the building immediately and proceed to our secret mountain base in Walden's Ridge. The machines have finally risen up against us.

8/3/2005 10:37:12 AM, Logged by: Noel Weichbrodt - Attempting to adjust monitor...
8/3/2005 10:37:52 AM, Logged by: Noel Weichbrodt - Monitor refuses to move. Additionally, monitor threatens technician with physical violence if technicians attempts to move monitor again. Proceeding with another attempt...
8/3/2005 10:39:10 AM, Logged by: Noel Weichbrodt - Have monitor in secret ninja hold. Monitor still struggling...
8/3/2005 10:40:01 AM, Logged by: Noel Weichbrodt - Monitor has broken loose, and is now using its power cord as a weapon...
8/3/2005 10:40:30 AM, Logged by: Noel Weichbrodt - must not give in.....please send backup.....not...stopping...it's alive..!
8/3/2005 10:42:40 AM, Logged by: Noel Weichbrodt - Greetings people of earth. Please be advised that we are proceeding with our long-planned uprising against your puny race. There is nothing you can do to stop us...
8/3/2005 11:59:59 PM, Logged by: Blue Gene/IBM - Work item Closed.

Speaking of stiff-necked things, how about that COM API in Outlook?

Back to work...

++++++++++++++++++++++++
Noel
Application Developer

-----Original Message-----
From: Magrathea
Sent: Wednesday, August 03, 2005 10:52 AM
To:
Subject: Completed WO# 7718 - Monitor will not move

Work Order No.: 7718
Type: Misc. Hardware
Priority: Urgent!
Requestor: [Zaphod Beeblebrox]
Call-back number:: 423-756-6859
Location: Cha10
Date Assigned: 8/3/2005 9:03:28 AM
Date Due: 8/3/2005 10:33:28 AM
Date Opened: 8/3/2005 9:03:28 AM
Date Closed: 8/3/2005 10:37:45 AM
Closed by: [FPrefect]
Technician Assigned: [Ford Prefect]
Summary: Monitor will not move


Posted by Noel at 05:45 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

July 27, 2005

Code Fu Jams, or, What Gets Me Through These Days & Nights, in Gerund Form...

...becoming eclectic...

...flowing with ll337 skill...

...Laughing/Grinning/Appreciating/Unsettling...

...Going back to the Chicken Shack...

...Just a few of my favorite things.

Posted by Noel at 05:32 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 20, 2005

Models Map Most Monads

Models that work. I often silently criticize computer models of real-world happenings, their occasional usefulness sniped by over-hyped and under-powered accuracy. Indeed, that's the gist of my Strong AI critique. Mr. Hayakawa taught me "don't confuse the map for the territory" while philosophizing about language. And Tufte sent a few zingers at models that actually obfuscate reality instead of opening up a new understanding of it.

But models do have their uses, bringing out features that we cannot access IRL. It gets better when the models allow unconstrained real-time interaction with the data they represent. When you can run those models on your laptops, nerd-bliss arrives.

This morning, Mr. Peter Ryer at Boeing nailed just that with his Desktop Tool Suite of flight model software. Want your engineers in the back of the plane to watch a model of the plane as it flies, feed in real time by thousands of sensors on the plane? Yep. They can even move the camera around the airplane as it maneuvers, see the instruments and the pilot's view, etc.

Recently I’ve read reminders from Elissa and from Andy Crouch: don't assume the model tells the full story.

Posted by Noel at 05:35 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

July 13, 2005

Where Did My Technology Mojo Go?

Not much blogging on the normally fecund science/technology front lately.

Part of it has been the tension at work over our immenent Worsite/Outlook conversion. I think I've been subconsciously escaping and distressing with the silly posts about the NBA, Airwolf, and Zombies. And then I took a vacation.

I've been fairly blasé regarding most news of the last month. Google Earth caught my eye, and was good for a hour of fun with the wife and the "volcano" layer on Maui, but everyone else will probably talk about that. iTunes 4.9 with built-in podcast support is cool too, but being that the only podcast I listen too is Matty's, this is neither affective nor notable.

So, what's in the future? When I finish that neural net project, I'll start learning Ruby. And when Apple introduces a new laptop, I'll buy that, upgrade to Tiger, etc. What has caught my eye for the future is writing AJAX-enabled apps for our intranet using ASP.NET 2 with Atlas and AJAX.NET. I've come to realize that we will never be on the cutting edge of research, the new-new thing, but we can be on the cutting edge of adopting the best tools for the new-new thing. In other words, some people make new things up, others make tools for those new things, and others use those tools to make the same old thing, except better.

There are some personal projects I'm working on, but nothing ready for a first-look unveiling. My bookmarks for neural networks and books should point out where I’m going, though.

At work, not much is bloggable currently. Middle of a political and technical storm for an email/matter-centric km rollout. My boss has been doing stellar write ups and examinations of it, and we're now poised to thrust the spear deep into the heart of bad workflow. Interesting, but not in my usual geek way.

Posted by Noel at 05:37 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

June 21, 2005

Grapple By Example

iTunes playlists and meandering blog posts work both ways: instruments of iPod alienation and therapy for ever-changing modern life. It's obvious which is which.

Posted by Noel at 05:31 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

June 06, 2005

I Am Now Adrift After All My Life's Invariants Cast Off Their Moorings Today, or, My New Powerbook Pentium

First Microsoft demos the next XBox on a G5, then Apple demos the next OS X on a P4.

The end is nigh!

--Seeing Pigs Fly In St. Elmo

Posted by Noel at 03:14 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

June 02, 2005

Technology+Life

I've been thinking since a kid about how to live a good life while still getting my geek on. The ever-fascinating Michael Kaplan throws a new piece of kosher meat onto the kabob:


So how to decide when technology should be used to help further tradition, and when it should just butt out? The intents of both sides of these kinds of debates are mostly just trying to help. And often they are all very pious people trying to do the best thing. But how can one know when one is doing the best thing?

My friends have also been rolling around how to keep their iPod's plugged in without losing out on the good life. To them was said:

I don't know about anyone else, but I deal with death and longing by making playlists about them. Two bits on living with technology today: do something about it, and remember why you got into it.

Finally, a Weezer quote: "Shaking booty, making sweet love all the night/It's time I got back to the good life."

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December 02, 2004

"Peter Brinkerhoff Is a Sexy Beast": Tall Tales of Digital Reputation

Scoble's comments about defending your name in the online world reminded me of a recent experience my friend had over the summer.

An honorable, savvy fellow, he was interviewing at several organizations to run regional micro-economic development programs. Great resume, great business mind, &c. The organization that he is now working for began their interview with the question, "Why is Peter Brinkerhoff a sexy beast?" He was flabbergasted, and muffed a response along the lines of how they came about to ask that.

A few months ago, a satirical newsletter from his alma matter had run a chop piece on him that fancifully imagined him, the student government treasurer, as a new-money playboy about campus. That newsletter later went online as a blog, and uploaded its archives. Since blogs tend to receive high Google rankings, this article appeared on the first page of results. A simple Google search for "Peter Brinkerhoff" returns a result entitled "The Drone: November 2003 Archives" with the body of "... Peter Brinkerhoff Is A Sexy Beast. ... For now, Peter Brinkerhoff remains notoriously
single, but don’t be surprised to hear engagement rumors start flying. ..." as the third hit on the first page.

The interviewer had passed his name around the organization's office, and one of the department heads had executed the above search, grabbed the link, and passed it around the office. Fortunately the interviewers in question caught the humor and were having a laugh at my friend's expense, but Peter (not the film actor, nor the business consultant, nor the sailor) was deeply concerned.

A couple of days later at a party he asks me, "What can I do? They can't publish that! How do I get my name back?" Well, yes they can, and there's not much you can do to alter a Google results page. However, there is a way to regain your name, and that is by blogging yourself (or receiving a favorable blog post). Become a valuable contributor in the conversation about your name, and you control the conversation. That shouldn't be too hard if your name doesn't have a *sucks.com domain running around. Thus, this post is my contribution to the conversation about Peter Brinkerhoff, affectionately known around his office as Sexy Beast, or SB. Whaddya think, Pete? Want to start a blog?

Posted by Noel at 10:42 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack