Ryan Wilcox: Inside the h4ck3r

Reasons To Vote For Ron Paul

Mon, 17 Dec 2007 19:51:20 GMT

While I avoid getting political on this blog, today I found an article that echos my sentiments exactly: Reasons for Republicans to Vote Paul.

Now hear me out here. Ron Paul might come off as a nut-job, but it's an interesting thought to have someone in office that - while he's obviously a little power-hungry (running for President), it sounds like his respect for the Constitution reins that in.

If Giuliani is the R. candidate, I don't think the base will like that. A lot of their thought process will be "Mayor of NYC... a liberal capital of the world... with poor family values because he's been married all those times... and he's just too liberal for me, thanks".

If Clinton is the D. candidate, Rs turned off by Giuliani won't vote for her... if it was Clinton vs Satan himself there would be a lot of soul searching... and my money would be on Satan to win.

But Clinton also appears too left for a bit of the Democratic party, I think (or maybe too "business as it is now, but with more rules and corporations!"). So you've got some people unhappy there.

Paul, on the other hand, appeals to both the conservative (fiscally and Christian) sides of the Republican party, and to the Democrats turned off by Clinton. Imagine (parts of) two parties getting together on a candidate. Paul would add an extra feather in his cap to choose Kucinich as his running mate.

Whoever is the R candidate will get a lot of "Never Hillary" vote from the right... but I think only Paul can get any of that vote from the left.

My prediction for a Clinton v Giuliani election: record low turn-out. Bargain Basement low.

A New Generation Gap

Tue, 11 Dec 2007 00:11:38 GMT

The Next Generation Gap: Xers vs Ys: A Gon Xer looks around at the Gen-Xers in the office and looks back when she was the young upstart in a room full of Boomers.

Its an interesting look at ~~Gen Y~~Millennials (I thought the "Millennial" label was for those say born in ~1995-2008, but wikipedia has an interesting article on the topic including some vagueness on the start dates).

Now Iâo[dot accent]m getting a dose of my own smugness because a lot has changed in ten years. I am not always the slick up-and-comer in the room with a strikingly new perspective. Sometimes I am just the Gen-Xer bombarded with the extreme optimism and potential of the Millennials. (Another insult: These people used to be called Generation Y, but they donâo[dot accent]t like to be associated with Gen Xers, so they prefer the term âo[ogonek]Millennials.âo[caron])

Friday The 13th Edition (or: Local School FIRE!!!)

Fri, 13 Apr 2007 13:43:44 GMT

Last night I heard fire engine sirens and all kinds of commotion around midnight. This morning I got up and found an email from my mom (a school teacher at the local elementary school).

The email said that last night her building had a fire!

Luckily someone was there to trigger the fire alarm (teachers keep funny hours too maybe???!!!), or I'm sure it would have been worse.

The fire was on the opposite side of the building as where Mom works, but if there was smoke damage I suppose her room could be affected.

Just Wow.

Occupation: President

Sat, 15 Apr 2006 00:14:53 GMT

Now here's an interesting fact: President Bush paid $187,768 in taxes for 2005 (a little late aren't we? taxes are due Monday!) (Wouldn't it be weird to write "President Of the United States Of America" on your tax forms? Wouldn't it be weird to processes such things?) Anyway, mildly interesting, and probably close to right. The IRS 2005 Tax Schedule says to take $94727 + 35% of (gross adjusted income - $326450) = $237,719. So, there's a slight difference ($50,000, but remember the amount of money we're talking about here. Also remember that when you go to the tax man there's all kinds of deductions and everything. So, like I said, probably close to right.) It's just interesting, anyway.

Now You Know

Thu, 02 Mar 2006 05:57:07 GMT

ABC.AU News: Proper plural for platapus: platapod. Now we just have to figure out term for a group of them. (A bunch of platatod).

Church Podcast

Mon, 30 Jan 2006 22:43:51 GMT

Church of the New Covenant in Mansfield, PA has started podcasting sermons. Link to the podcast feed (well, ok, the full text feed, but the sermons/.mp3s are available as enclosures (aka: podcasts).

About Geeks

Thu, 26 Jan 2006 14:37:58 GMT

Woohh. Today I found the following links:

Top Ten Reasons Why Geeks Make Good Friends
Top Ten Reasons why you should date a geek (although this is very tongue-in-cheek, or well hidden satire. I'm not sure. But it's written by Robert Scoble's wife, so, well, maybe she has a point.)
Dos and Don'ts of Dating Geeks
And from horsepigcow (Wolf Ram and Hart?): More reasons to date geeks
Ten Reasons why it isn't always easy being married to a geek
Top ten reasons Geeks make good fathers

Ok, now back to work.

Update: 10 Reasons to Love Having a Geek Mama. Because that was a very male oriented bunch of lists

Fight: Yojimbo vs Stickybrain

Tue, 24 Jan 2006 01:44:36 GMT

As a long time Stickybrain user, the arrival of Yojimbo on the Information Manager front piqued my interest. So I investigated Yojimbo to see if this new app lived up to its legendary name. Yojimbo wins over Stickybrain:

Smart Collections (think saved spotlight searches)
This is very cool (I wish Stickybrain had a feature like this) except I want to be able to query on a LOT of metadata, and not just the 8 different kinds of Smart Collections they have. I also want to be able to combine search terms ("show me recent serial numbers"), and other note attributes ("show me serial numbers I entered last month"). However, at least Yojimbo gives me more power here.
Drop Dock
This is just a cool idea - put items into Yojimbo (even into "collections" by just dragging a drawer type thing that pops out onto your desktop. Very Drop Drawers like.
Print/Import PDFs to Yojimbo
This is a very cool idea - of course, since neither of these apps are scriptable, I can't "roll my own" workflow where _part_ of it is to import the printed file.
.mac sync
Stickybrain has .mac backup/restore, but not SYNC. I can't do this in Stickybrain (unless I am careful and only work on Stickybrain on one computer at a time, which doesn't work at all for those people with a laptop and a desktop.)
simple installation
drag and drop the app. Stickybrain requires Installer
Labels
A nice feature.

Stickybrain wins over Yojimbo:

Support for iPod and Palm sync of notes. I want to take my notes on the go with me (sometimes)
I can associate ("link") a note with another note, or a note with an address. Sometimes this is helpful - it allows me to quickly view related information.
There's an explicit "back up notes" command. It makes me happy.
Multiple folder levels.
In Yojimbo you can't have collections inside of collections. In Stickybrain I have a Writing folder where I have subfolders for all of my current projects. To duplicate this in Yojimbo I would need to use labels (but they'd still be displayed with all of the other notes)
Services
Stickybrain has Mac OS X Services that let you save your selection (and submenus that allow you to control which folder you send it to). While "nobody uses services"... well, I do.

The Consumer Loses:

Scriptability
None of these apps are scriptable.
Interface
Both of these apps _really_ look like Mail. I'm not certain that this is a good interface for random data storage. FWIW, I liked Stickybrain 3's interface better than the Like Mail.app interface SB 4 has.
No OPML support
I'd like to be able to import a series of notes from an OPML file
Find
In the days of Spotlight, multiple search terms, and metadata, both of these apps' built in search features feel lacking in this department. Yes, Spotlight indexes both application's notes, but doing a Find inside the app itself logically narrows down the field of information - but it just feels like my searches are limited by one search attribute. Yojimbo lets me search on some metadata (more than Stickybrain) but it still feels really limited.
Bad text editing
I expected better from BareBones - they have this great text engine in BBEdit, many times better than what is in Cocoa... but they are (apparently) using Cocoa's. I can't Hard Wrap my text, there's no philip bar, no prefix/suffix, no grep find. I know Yojimbo isn't a text editor... but come on guys. (Stickybrain doesn't have any powerful editing capabilities beyond Cocoa's text control either, but I expected more from the makers of (some say) one of the best text editors on the planet.)

Answer: While I really like Yojimbo's .Mac sync services, I think it feels very "lite" compared to what Stickybrain can do for me. The interface feels fast compared to Stickybrain, and it has potential, but I'm waiting for Yojimbo 2.0: Now With More Ninja.

The Macintosh: Simply Amazing Software

Wed, 04 Jan 2006 15:09:11 GMT

A friend was over the other day, and we were printing her resume. While we were in the process of fixing it up (my publishing background makes me more tweaky on that kind of stuff than a normal programmer), we were using Word on my Mac. It often amazes me, having a Windows using person sit down and watch me use my Mac. I always get all these questions, and things that we (as Mac users) take for granted are like a Christmas surprise to these people. The catcher is: I was just using my computer normally - I wasn't even using the geee-wizz features of the OS (Expose or Dashboard, both of which I use a handful of times a day) Almost the first thing I got questioned about was my use of Desktop Manager. I said "That lets me keep a bunch of workspaces open at the same time. Like I can keep my email + IM programs up, but in the background, and when I want to switch back with them, just activate that desktop. Or I can work on two projects simultaneously, each one in a different work space") The next thing she noticed was my IM client - Adium. She was amazed how I could just hover over an IM name and have the away message displayed in a tooltip. (Oh, and how I have all my IM names in Address Book, so Adium displays the person's real name and not their AIM screen name.) Then an IM came in. I have my Adium set up so that the first message I get from a person is read aloud via Apple's Text To Speech Engine. So my computer starts reading it aloud... it's incredible to me how PC people go crazy over Macintalk. We were in Safari, and we couldn't spell something. So right clicked on the word, and the correct spelling was in the popup. (Woohhh!). Ummm... Windows doesn't have this? (to be fair, most Mac apps don't either. Cocoa apps get it for free, and it's a wonderful thing.) Even in Word I would sometimes do interesting things. Like Option-Arrow to go to the previous/next word, and Command-Arrow to go to the end of the line. (Home and End does this on the PC, but I can imagine the Mac Word team having to implement the Command/Option arrow thing after a million feature requests for this from the Mac people requesting it after seeing how powerful that combination is in MPW Shell/BBEdit.).

Of course, using Word isn't fair: throw a few basic publishing techniques (ie: Paragraph Styles, which nobody seems to get) at Word and while the mere mortals tremble, I curse 'cause Word's fighting with me.

Anyway, we were focused on fixing/printing her resume, so I wasn't doing my normal ADD-like (actual) task switching, and I'm certain that, had we been doing more than Word work, she would have been enthralled at any number of things like:

How I launch apps (I have a Spotlight query that lists all the applications found on my machine, then I type the name of the app I want to find into that query and let Spotlight find the app whose name matches. A little slower than my old friend TigerLaunch, but less mousing.)
NetNewsWire. 'Cause everybody freaks the first time they get RSS
The Dock. The Dock is cool (especially how I put folders in it and use it as a quick navigation system.)

Oh, and we have no viruses and spyware. Next person that says "Ohhh, you use a Mac" like it was some kind of social leprosy I'm going to seriously laugh sooo hard at them. They just don't get it.

Slashdot: Song (Lyric) Sites Face Possible Jail Time

Fri, 09 Dec 2005 16:13:48 GMT

From the original article:

The Music Publishers' Association (MPA), which represents US sheet music companies, will launch its first campaign against such sites in 2006.

+5 Insightful Comment On Slashdot:

DUDE: "Hey man, I just figured out the solo for [insert song here]. It's so cool to play." OTHER DUDE: "Sweet, show me how it goes." DUDE: "Um, I can't -- it's illegal. And don't tell anyone I figured it out myself. If anybody asks I bought the music." ...

My possibly over the top reaction:
"Ummm, ok, so how do you prevent people from writing down lyrics from whatever they're listening to? I play some music for you, what's to prevent you from writing down the lyrics? (However, here's the thing. Reading the FBI warning on movies, I'm still not certain if inviting a friend over to watch a DVD is legal or not. So maybe letting a friend listen to you music is illegal too. The one advantage about the FBI warnings on DVDs is they spell things out, explicitly. I don't have such an explicit warning on my music... maybe a 30 second disclaimer read right before the music on track 1?) Whatever. The more the music industry alienates their fanbase the faster the replacement will come. I, for one, welcome our new music overlords (whoever they are). Hopefully they're less sue happy and smarter about how technology affects their music.

All you really needed to know about: Suduko

Mon, 28 Nov 2005 01:34:35 GMT

I've heard the buzz about Sudoku for a while, but never got around to playing it until this weekend. Boy, was I missing out. The idea of sudoku is to fill in rows, columns, and regions with the numbers 1-9. Except you can't have more than 1 instance of a number in any given row, column, or region. Back up. Sudoku is played in a 9x9 grid. Inside this grid are 9 3x3 sub-grids (the regions). The idea is to place numbers on each grid item, so that the numbers 1-9 only appear one time in a given row/column/region. Sounds like a great 10-15 minute game... and wouldn't it be great to play it on my Palm, with it taking care of some of the bookkeeping ("Oh, right, I didn't see that 2 there...") for me? Andrew Gregory's Sudoku Palm application fills that On the Go need for me. There's also a console version of Sudoku, by Michael Kennett (but I didn't take the 15 minutes to figure out why the makefile wouldn't install the binaries for me). On the Mac, there's Sudoku Susser which is alright (even if the interface could use some work). For those of you who either don't get a Sudoku puzzle in your papers, or don't have a subscription to the paper (like me!), there's the Daily Sudoku, which even lets you get skill appropriate Sudoku. Happy Puzzle-ing!

Go Bison!

Wed, 23 Nov 2005 18:52:31 GMT

AP: Bucknell Upsets No. 17 Syracause 74-69 There's also an ACTION-PACKED version w00t. w00t. Also very surreal. Today, at breakfast, my sister mentioned that the a few days ago she was in the gym, on a machine beside Pat Flannery. SO yeah. Go Bison(s?) + Pat.

Today's IM gem

Wed, 02 Nov 2005 04:30:45 GMT

Laz : pimping ain't easy, ryan
Laz : it is a mild irritation
Laz : crossing border into annoyance
me: I feel your p41n

From the BBC: Fall Stuff

Mon, 31 Oct 2005 04:10:06 GMT

From the BBC/Northern Ireland: A collection of fall games (including some Halloween ones to get you in the "spirit". (Bwaaaahhhaaaaa!!!)) And some fall desktop pictures, screen savers, recipe ideas, all sorts of stuff. The BBC is cool!

I saw Serenity...

Sun, 02 Oct 2005 02:33:43 GMT

Last night I saw Serenity. My (Grade) Rating: A Favorite quotes:

Wash: "I am a leaf in the wind"
Mal: "Don't laugh that I've read a poem" (or something like that)
Operative: "You put key members of parliament in a room with a psychic?!!!!"
Inara: "That's not incense"
Kaylee: "You mean like sex?"

Odd occurance: After the movie like 80% of the audience stayed through the entire credits. Don't know if they were waiting for "Grrr! Arrgh!!", or if they were just basking in the glory that is the Big Damn Movie. Or sitting waiting for the "we'd like to thank the fans, without who none of this would be possible" - or something like that - bit of text at the end of the credits. ('Cause usually failed TV series don't get made into major motion pictures.) Wait they did though, and so did we. At the end of the credits, hints of the theme song from Firefly were interwoven into the song. A nice touch. After the movie let out, saw a person dressed as the Capt'n, and a girl dressed like Kaylee, and someone with a Blue Sun shirt. I went over and said hi to the person with the shirt, 'cause I have a Blue Sun hat. I thought it was shiny. I'll have to see it at least 2 more times to get the fullness of it. Can't wait

Joy Of... Serenity

Fri, 30 Sep 2005 15:40:24 GMT

I don't often read the Joy Of Tech, but today's comic nails what I'll be doing this weekend to a tee. Except, in Rochester. Oh, and I'll be wearing the Blue Sun hat instead of the Blue Sun shirt. I want one of those #28 Jayne shirts too, but that's beside the point. Your Evil Overlord Commandment for the day: See Serenity

QOTD: What's on your keychain?

Mon, 19 Sep 2005 22:45:54 GMT

Soon after I started driving I made a statement like "I'll never have 20 million things on my keychain. Just a ring, and keys." Well, soon afterwards the high school basketball team did really well (as well as the team had done in memory - including the memory of the coach, who also coached teams Way Back When.). I got a keyring with my name and the record of the team inscribed on it. Fast Forward: Christmas, 2003. I and (what would become QSA Toolworks) were working with Atimi. For a little Christmas present they sent several pens out to team members, and I got a pen that you put on your keychain. Early 2005: Added a 256MB flash drive September 19, 2005: Added a penlight type flashlight to my keychain. Total device count: 4
Total key count: 4

Browncoat Short Story Challenge

Mon, 12 Sep 2005 19:26:30 GMT

I don't usually write short stories (technical writing + blog writing consume most of my creative energies), but I think I'm going to have a shot at this Browncoat Challenge:

You are the only journalist who has witnessed the first documented Reaver attack in the history of the [OE]verse. What was once considered only a campfire story is now indisputably real. File a dispatch on what you have seen and what the implications of the confirmed existence of Reavers have for the future.

Serenity In Lego (and more)

Mon, 22 Aug 2005 16:05:29 GMT

The coolest thing I've seen in a long time: Serenity in Lego His model is amazing. and massive (33 inches long, 21 inches wide, at a 1:55 scale to the real Serenity IMDB entry on Serenity the movie (out September 2005) Oh yes, and Chiwetel Ejiofor has my vote for the next Bond. Serenity will prove he can be a bada**. Listen to the Serenity "Signal" Podcast at Serenityfirefly.com Ok, I better stop before I waste the entire morning on this post.

Weblog Tweaking

Sat, 23 Jul 2005 19:28:50 GMT

Today I noticed that the titles for a weblog post are sometimes hard to distinguish from the body of the post itself - making it easy for two posts to visually "mash" together. I've always made the justification that "the comments/trackback (and tag thing) will be enough"... well, when I start to have trouble picking out posts (especially long, detailed, or ones with lots of outgoing links), then it's time to do something. So I did. Post titles are now underlined and slightly indented. Hope you like.

Don't believe everything you see on postcards

Fri, 17 Jun 2005 02:25:12 GMT

Dear Virginia, The Jackalope really ~~does~~ doesn't exist. (But I like the "also called" names. Horny Bunny, huh?) Love,
Ryan Find More: American Folklore See also: The Mythical Beast of Northern PA: the Squonk (but I've, oddly, never heard of such a legend.) More Exploration: Folklore of the United States (Wikipedia is my link-daddy)

More Than You Ever Wanted To Know About: Singular Thier and Jane Austen (and elsewhere)

Wed, 15 Jun 2005 17:53:16 GMT

Singular "their" in Jane Austen and elsewhere: "Jane Austen and other famous authors violate what everyone learned in their English class." A fascinating article if you're into that sort of thing, horribly yawn-worthy if not. However it is annoying that some of the links to external (interesting) documents don't work. (Found via: Reflection's Edge: English for Time Travelers, Part 2: The Future (or, English for Sci-Fi Writers)

Programming with a notebook

Tue, 14 Jun 2005 14:02:47 GMT

When I work, I keep a notebook by my side when a program... A physical notebook - usually a Cambridge 8.5"x11.75" legal pad - these legal pads open upwards, a feature I liked because then the spine never fights with your hand when the spine is on (the same side as your primary hand). Having to put your wrist over the spine to write on a page is annoying, and sometimes cold. Sturdy notebook. good quality paper, and when I'm using a notebook every dayish for a year or more, quality matters. I picked up this practice when I worked, during college, at ITA, Inc.. I don't remember if I was given the practice exactly, told to "Do This", or if it was an evolution of the basic need to Keep Track Of What You're Working On, So The Client Knows What You Did During That Time. This was in the OS 9 era, so if you made a mistake and had your program crash, your machine might be in an unstable state. Keeping this form of documentation in BBEdit or directly in the hours database just didn't work. On this topic, David Luebbert says:

When I started to work with Charles Simonyi, he taught me to keep a steno notebook at my side. Anytime I found a design issue, some problem in the code, made a change in the code, made a to-do-list or had an idea that could improve the product, I would write that down on the right side of the steno sheets with an empty check box next to each item.

Further in the article David goes on to talk about how this interconnects with Instant Outlining (an oldish idea made new again.)

Writing

Tue, 14 Jun 2005 06:22:10 GMT

Tonight I was writing my ADHOC paper, and wanted to make a side-note about something. Well, the sidenote grew, and now I'll spend at least a page to a page and a half on the topic. Plus, the idea works around several annoying problems with my primary approach. Sort of spontaneous though. I like when that happens. (Oh, and, looking at my referrer logs, I have some sort of entity reading my past entries. Human or 'bot, 'Hail from the h4ck3r!)

HOWTO: Date a developer

Wed, 08 Jun 2005 14:30:02 GMT

Girls in relationships with developers should read this blog entry. It might help the culture shock some. It's all true.