Stephanie A. Kesler: Adventures in Technology

My Favorite and Least Favorite Gadget of 2006

Tue, 02 Jan 2007 05:30:26 GMT

I realize I'm a bit late in doing this post - one generally does "The Year's Best" in the week between Christmas and New Year's. But I was busy with activities such as jetting off to Seattle for the day.

I'm going to keep my list short: one fabulous device and one device that I basically want to fling out the window on a daily basis.

My Favorite Gadget of 2006: The iRiver Clix MP3 player.

I know, I know. You're thinking, "An MP3 player? And an MP3 player that's not an iPod?" Well, I'm here to tell you that the iRiver Clix is a sweet little gem - hands down my favorite interface on any device that I use. I think the interface is actually superior to the iPod. And I realize "them's fightin' words". Especially for my buddy Isaac. However, the clix click feedback is soooo satisfying. The display is wonderful and the navigation interface is very very intuitive - again, other than "shuffle", I think the navigation is easier on the Clix than the iPod. However, I do admit that the Clix shuffle feature is hard to find and also seems to be buggy - or at the very least, their random algorithm has issues.

Music is loaded onto the Clix via Window's Media Player. When I first discovered Media Player 11 was required, I was aghast. The last thing I wanted was to use an official Microsoft product to move tunes to my MP3 player. I had concerns regarding DRM and usability. The DRM issues were not an issue because I rip songs from CDs and I use a high end shareware program, Audiograbber to do my ripping. I only use the Media Player software to load the ripped tunes to the Clix. In regards to interface, I was pleasantly surprised, Windows Media Player 11 interface is not hideous. It's actually pretty easy to use.

But enough about Windows. It's the iRiver Clix that's the star. The video display is screaming wonderful. Sharp and vibrant with tons of depth. It is such a treat.

My only complaint is that the Clix is a flash player with just 2 Gb of storage. I want to put all of my music on my MP3 player - for that I need at least 30 Gigs. And with that sweet sweet screen, you definitely want to watch videos. So, I want a 60 Gig Clix.

My Least Favorite Device of 2006: The HTC kjam smartphone.

Here's the sad thing - the kjam is probably one of the best smartphones on the market. Its keyboard is definitely the best full QWERTY keyboard available on a phone. But the phone cannot overcome its fatal flaw - Windows Mobile Operating System. Omigod, it sucks beyond belief. It is soooo important for a phone to have an intuitive interface and not be buggy. Windows Mobile is not intuitive and it's very very buggy.

At the very least, the actual phone interface and software should be rock solid. For goodness sakes, mobile phones have been around for over ten years and we've been using phones for almost 100 years. This is not new stuff. But, Windows Mobile is a classic example of Microsoft interface design at their worst. At least 1/3 of time, when my phone rings and I answer it by selecting the "answer" button, it doesn't answer correctly. Instead the person calling me hears me muttering, "fucking phone" when I can't hear them and then the software hangs up the phone. One of my other little favorite design features is that after you dial your call, the keypad screen disappears. Have the Microsoft designers never heard of voice mail or audio response systems where one makes menu selections from the keypad? Evidently not. When using Windows Mobile, one has to hit another button to get the keypad to come back up. By the time, you've figured all of that out, you've lost your opportunity to perform the menu selection.

The obvious question is, why do I still use this phone? Well, I've become very attached to getting my email on my phone. I also love the keyboard.

However, I've learned some key lessons. My next smartphone will not have a "soft screen". It will have an actual physical keypad for dialing. I will also not use Windows Mobile again. Unless, they dramatically change for the better.

Hollywood Digital Conference

Wed, 25 Oct 2006 17:15:00 GMT

The first two days of the Digital Hollywood conference have been very very interesting. This is a high energy conference with a lot of smart aggressive folks. That being said, more than once, I feel like it's the dotcom boom déjà vu all over again. It's that same manic mindset with lots of postulating, visionarying, and venture capital looking for a home. However, this time around, at least some of what is discussed has actually been delivered and money is being made.

Required reading is The Long Tail. The Long Tail is the It Term and the frame of reference for this conference. The Long Tail has been on my book pile for the past few months. With not a lot of forethought, I decided to read it just before this conference - I thought it might be referenced once or twice and I wanted to be hip to what was going on. Lucky decision on my part.

Perhaps my favorite session so far was the Mobile Music session. Very bright articulate folks. My notes from that session consisted entirely of quotes:

"There are two long tails. One consisting of consumers. The other consisting of a multitude of businesses. Some of those businesses have VC funding. Some have no funding at all - they're true startups."
"There are companies that think they are businesses but they're really features that need to be bought by businesses."
"Walk into a Starbucks next year, hear a song you like, punch a button, and the song is downloaded on to your next gen iPod."
"Apple is the big gorilla. They go to Starbucks and say, 'This is what we want to do.' and Starbucks says 'Where do you want the transmitter?'
"A device hears a song you might like, the phone buzzes you and says 'Hey you might like this song, do you want me to find out more?'"
"The film industry has leapfrogged the music industry in terms of rights management.
"The environments/markets/niches that do the most infringing are the ones that should be embraced the most."
"Anyone who can make money complaining, is going to complain."

At the Feet of the Master

Wed, 19 Jul 2006 06:28:36 GMT

I realize the title of this post is a tad over the top. However, it's actually pretty darn close to the truth. I spent today in a one day course (with a thousand of my closest friends) presented by Edward Tufte - one of the great minds of data analysis and the presentation of data analysis. I realize that to the non-initiated, data analysis and data analysis presentation may seem to be about as interesting as watching paint dry. However, it's an unbelievably compelling field and Tufte does a wonderful job of letting us all in on the secret: data analysis and presentation is fascinating and of critical importance.

I've been a Tufte fan (disciple?) since the mid-80's when I purchased his first book, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. (How's that for a whiz bang title?). I instantly fell in love when I read that book - the book itself is a publishing masterpiece and the content is revolutionary and eye opening. It was rated in the top 100 of non-fiction books of the 20th century and it's that good.

Today's course was really quite good - a full day of Tufte - and he is a very engaging and compelling speaker. He's as we say in the tech biz - high bandwidth. Or as he would say, "high resolution". Lots of data - presented in a way that can be parsed and discussed. In fact discussion is a big part of his credo, data should be presented in a manner that allows for thorough discussion, questioning, and understanding. Particuarly germane to that principal were his analyses of the missteps in analysis and presentation of analysis in both the Challenger and Columbia shuttle accidents. He was part of the post mortem teams for both events and the errors in communication of important data analyses resulted in literally catastrophic events.

Anyhoo, I could go on and on. But, what a fabulous day.

Here's a reproduction of his favorite piece of data analysis and presentation. I have framed copy on my office wall at work (Mom gave it to me 20 years ago!!!!!).

Napolean's March to Moscow: The War of 1812:

ASCII Zidane

Wed, 12 Jul 2006 06:15:43 GMT

Continuing with tonight's apparent ASCII theme, here's ASCII Zinedine Zidane. Pretty nifty!

Girl Gadgeteers

Mon, 10 Jul 2006 18:49:34 GMT

Good article today in CNET on Girl Gadgeteers. I was worried that the article was going to be all pink and fluff. But, although pink and fluff surfaced once or twice, overall the article was not bad at all.

I was particularly interested in the concept of soft and/or smart fabrics. There were also some nifty car related devices.

SIP to the Rescue - Tales from GCI's Australian Outpost

Fri, 31 Mar 2006 02:16:54 GMT

Andrew, an ace GCI developer is an aussie who is currently back home in Melbourne. The telecommunications and time zone challenges when trying to sync up between Melbourne and Anchorage are daunting. However, as Andrew stated, "SIP to the rescue!" Here's his tale:

Problem: My wife has a hard time being able to call her family back in the US. Seattle is currently 5 hours ahead of Melbourne, so by the time she comes home from work each night it's usually too late to call. With daylight savings starting in the US this weekend and also ending here, that will become 7 hours. She can't call from work during the day or on her cell as the rates are sooo pricey.

Solution: I have configured my Sipura 3000 (aka same hardware as PhoneGnome) to pick up incoming calls on the PSTN after 25 seconds. I have the bridging function working, so that if you enter the appropriate PIN, it connects US dial tone. Then it's just a matter of dialing the US number....kinda similar to a calling card service I guess.

So now Annie can call our house on her lunch break, and wait for the ATA to pick up. Once it does, she just enters her PIN and gets connected to our US 'unlimited nation wide' SIP service.

Clever huh? :-) The ATA bridges the PSTN and (potentially multiple) VoIP services, all in such a tiny physical package.

ta da!!!!!

The Ultimate Telco Geekery

Tue, 24 Jan 2006 04:28:58 GMT

O.K. - on the telco front, this is about the coolest thing I've seen in a long time. I want to set one of these puppies up!!!

It would be an absolute blast to get old school (really old school) telco gear from the 30's and 40's working with modern day VoIP. I may have to do this!!!!!!!

The Sony PSP

Tue, 10 Jan 2006 01:47:46 GMT

So, for a work project, I received the very onerous job of dinking around with a Sony PSP - a choice assignment that certainly solidifies my geek credentials. Anyhoo, the mission was to evaluate the PSP overall user interface and its chops as a personal broadband device. Here are my impressions:

The good stuff.

Best display I've seen on a hand held device. Absolutely stunning. The response and tactile feedback of the controls/buttons/etc. is also very very very good.
The thing must have a screaming processor. Things happen very quickly - unless you're accessing the UMD player (more about that later).
It's probably the single most gorgeous hand held device I've ever used. To use a guy term - it is absolutely cherry.

The iffy stuff.

Connecting to a wireless network is not as easy as it could be - but since gamers are its initial core audience, that's o.k. But it needs to be a little more seamless for the general audience.
If the device wants to be more than just a gaming device, it needs a keyboard. And there are some very nifty ways that they could build in a keyboard. Sony has the expertise - their Clie line of PDA's offered some of the best form/function/usability out there.

The bad stuff.

The PSP sucks at holding a wireless signal - or at least a signal that's at 72% of strength.
The PSP I purchased at Best Buy required a firmware update in order to pick up internet functionality such as a browser or RSS feeds.
The manual absolutely sucks - no real information. I had to do all my sleuthing on the net - that's how I found out about the firmware update with browser functionality.
Doing anything with the browser but w/out a keyboard is a pain in the patootie.
This next one is a deal killer - The thing has no on board storage. You have to buy Sony memory cards - which are not cheap. It comes with a 32 Mb card which is absolutely minimal. If you have the big bucks, you can buy a 1 Gb memory card. But that's ridiculous. The video ipod comes with 40 Gb to 80 Gb hard drives. It's clear that Sony deliberately made the no hard drive decision for three reasons:
1. Push sales of their proprietary memory sticks.
2. Push sales of their little UMD mini disks - that's how the movies and games are distributed. Oh - and BTW, blank UMD's are not available to end users. So you can't make your own UMD disks.
3. DRM protection - it is quite clear that Sony will cripple their products in order to "protect" their content (re: the recent Sony CD rootkit debacle). As a result of that myopic corporate suit thinking, they have totally crippled their product.
In summary - this device is a poster child for the best of Sony and the worst of Sony all wrapped into one. With one or two changes, it could be a killer device - I'd make it my primary device in a heartbeat - well - if it weren't Sony since I'm officially boycotting Sony - but then again, if they made those changes, they wouldn't be Sony. They'd be an enlightened company.

Adventures in Virus Detection Software

Thu, 05 Jan 2006 02:03:23 GMT

Yesterday, in a fit of rightousness, I decided to toss out Norton Anti-Virus in favor of F-Secure.

I was mightly peeved at Norton for two reasons:

Norton refused to recognize the Sony Rootkit application as Malware. Under intense pressure, Norton finally provided a means to uncloak the rootkit, but not remove it. Norton is definitely kowtowing to corporate entities.

I purchased Norton Anti-Virus in March of 2005. In November, they informed me that my subscription was about to expire. I did not purchase an 8 month subscription, I purchased a twelve month subscription. I felt totally jerked around.

So, based on a bit of research, I decided to switch to F-Secure. Very highly thought of, good reviews, and they were all over Sony. Yesterday, I went ahead with the big switch. And that's when my problems started.

I downloaded F-Secure and then started the installation. First issue was that I had ad-aware installed and F-secure doesn't like ad-aware. So I removed it. F-Secure also asked me to disconnect from the Internet. Well that was easier said than done - I was a on a wireless VPN connection and I didn't want to go through all the hassle so I foolishly went ahead with the connection intact. And that's when the wheels fell completely off. The F-Secure install actually completed even though it shouldn't have - and Ping was in bad shape - he would no longer completely boot - he'd hang at various points along the way. Of if he did appear to finally boot - after 20 minutes- he was completely unresponsive - I ended up doing a ton of hard resets.

Today, after sleeping on the problem, I decided to approach the the situation methodically. I booted Ping in safe mode. I then removed F-Secure and then rebooted in normal mode. Voila - Ping came right back up! One problem down.

I then removed all of the Norton Anti-Virus stuff. That took several passes to get it all. At this point, Windows started flashing alerts that I was running without any virus protection. I ignored the flashing lights and continued on.

The next step was to hunt down a good registry cleanup program, TweakNow RegCleaner. It was my theory that the registry had become buggered up during the F-Secure installation. And sure enough, that was the case - there were three invalid F-secure entries in the register - which RegCleaner spruced right up.

Finally, I reinstalled F-Secure. And the resintallation went without a hitch. I configured the application and scanned my system for viruses, spyware, and rootkits. Ping came up completely clean with the exception of one spyware application. Which F-Secure immediately squashed.

So - life is good. Ping is well inoculated and I'm no longer supporting Symantec (the company that owns Norton)!

NewsGator and Other Geek Nifties

Thu, 29 Dec 2005 00:48:51 GMT

I realize I'm quite late to the whole RSS aggregator thing. But, I basically live within Outlook (I know, that's fundamentally wrong since Microsoft pretty much checks the evil box, but what can you do when Outlook is the corporate standard?) and I did not want an RSS aggregator that was separate from Outlook. I know that I would never actually use the thing.

So, today is my annual day at work to wander around the web checking out all things interesting and nifty. And guess what I stumbled across? NewsGator's Outlook Edition. It integrates seamlessly with Outlook. It works very very well. I have it up and running on both my work desktop and Ping. The software seamlessly synchs up between the two clients. Just really snazzy! Here's a screen shot of what it looks like:

Again, another trend that I'm very late to the party on: Flickr. I spent time surfing around their site and I love how they've implemented tags and the site organization is great. I may move all of my photos over to Flickr. They'd still show up on this blog but they'd be hosted at Flickr. Both Scott and Arthur use Flickr as their photo repository.

E-mail Adventures

Sat, 28 May 2005 07:20:27 GMT

Last night, my company performed a major e-mail upgrade and migration. This morning everyone within the company had spiffy functioning e-mail - everyone but me.

When I fired up my computer and opened my e-mail, my inbox had a grand total of 10 e-mails and none of them were older than 12:01 AM this morning. That was sort of thrilling - my inbox had gotten completely out of hand this week - it had 150 e-mails last night when I logged off. I usually try to keep my inbox down to a max of about ten e-mails. So, in a way, the 10 e-mails were a welcome sight.

I then checked my calendar - absolutely no appointments. And no contacts within my address book. Zip, zero, zilch, nada. It was as if I had been wiped of the face of the earth. Which gives one a bit of a goose on the liberating front. I'm free! I'm free!

However, I came to my senses and called in the helpdesk. After much research, we figured out that the migration process must not have completed. All my old e-mail, contacts, and calendars made it to their new location. However, the old e-mail box was not deleted. As a result, the Exchange server is confused - sometimes it will direct incoming mail to my old email box and sometimes the mail gets directed to my new box. And of course, we can't do anything simple like blow away my old e-mail box - the system won't allow that. So, the tech boys will research the issue over the weekend and I have a mechanism that will allow me to keep track of the mail in both boxes.

Life certainly is complicated.

UPDATE: at 10:30 PM, our ace tech guy (on his own time) started working on my account(s) and within a few minutes, all was well. All my e-mails were now happy to be in one location - the correct location!

I Am Still a Programming Stud

Wed, 27 Apr 2005 04:34:24 GMT

Well, Programming Stud is probably a bit of an overstatement. However, I was able to do a big favor for Pooh and his Pokerblog.

Pooh was quite taken with the Tiltmeter on The Tiltboys blog. The Tiltboys graciously provided the source code for the Tiltmeter - it was written in .tcl (tickle). Well, I'd heard of .tcl but that was about it. However, I took a peek at the code and then visited the official .tcl website. I thought this might be something that I could figure out.

Well, it took me a bit to putter my way through the script. I then downloaded the binary for the .tcl interpreter. I made Pooh's requested customizations to the Tiltmeter and voila, one Pokerblog Tiltmeter.

Pooh is very pleased.

"POOHPOP" aka Ski Boy is less than pleased with his Tiltmeter reading.

Oh Boy!

Sun, 17 Apr 2005 23:11:10 GMT

Oh boy!!!!! Joe is back posting again!!! He disappeared from the face of the earth for over a month.

And I agree with him, Firefox is a great browser. I puttered around with Safari on my Mom's Mac - Firefox is definitely superior to Safari. And well, Internet Explorer is still an archaic, wheezy, bloated monopolistic application.

Major XP Task Manager Issue Solved!

Sat, 16 Apr 2005 05:35:37 GMT

For the past several weeks, Ping's Windows Task Manager window displayed just the process list. The application, performance and other tabs weren't displayed. I was trapped in the process list mode.

I figured something got roached and something hideous like a reinstallation of XP would be required. At the very least, I expected a patch install.

However, I finally got around to visiting the Microsoft support page and the very first listing under task manager was entitled Task Manager Menu Bar and Tabs Are Not Visible in Windows XP. Voila!

As it turned out, my task manager was operating in tiny footprint mode. To get it out of microscopic foot mode, all I needed to do was double click in the top border of task manager window. Which I did. And, magically, all the task manager tasks appeared!

That was easy!!!!!!!!

Gack

Sun, 13 Mar 2005 19:35:37 GMT

Weatherwise, we've reached a new low (so to speak - a little weather pun there). 37 degrees and pouring rain. Definitely another stay inside day.

Which is o.k. - I still have tons of techie stuff on my to do list:

Get a new printer.

See if I can defeat the nefarious iTunes and load all of my legitimate MP3's (ripped from my very own CD's) into iTunes. If iTunes wins that battle, they'll lose the war because I'll switch to Anapod Explorer and never use iTunes again. Which isn't a huge loss - I'm actually not a huge iTunes fan. iTunes is not as intuitive or as full featured as advertised.

A Hodgepodge Kind of Day

Sun, 13 Mar 2005 08:02:25 GMT

Since we're still in the midst of this way earlier than usual breakup, the only sane Saturday option was to stay inside.

I puttered away on the technical front - I managed to get our new D-Link wireless print server up and running. The wireless print server allows me to print from Ping anywhere in the house. Very handy indeed.

However, in the process I discovered that the USB port on my old HP Photosmart 1215 seems to be non-functional. This is an issue because the wireless print server connects to the printer via a USB connection. I tried every trick in the book with no luck. Right now, I'm using my little portable printer. But, tomorrow I'm going hunting for a new printer. sigh...Tech stuff is never easy or inexpensive.

iTunes....Grrr......

Mon, 07 Mar 2005 05:13:04 GMT

O.K. I've bleepin' had it with iTunes.

As you all know, I have a new laptop Ping.

I am attempting to transfer all of my music from my iPod back to Ping. Well, good luck with that. Apple bowing to the f***ing RIAA Nazi's makes it virutally impossible to upload music from your iPod to any sort of computer.

I've tried using freeware/shareware to upload the music, but the performance was spotty. For example, on several albums only two songs were uploaded.

So, I bit the bullet - hooked Hewey (my old laptop with the dead LCD) to an external monitor, then linked Hewey and Ping up via IntelliMover and transfered all of my tunes over from Hewey to Ping. It took three hours - but everything made it.

So, I just attempted to import all of my very legal music - I have the CDs for every single song - into iTunes. Well, here's bleepin' I got on every song:

The song (name of song here) could not be used because the original could not be located. Would you like to locate the original?

Hell No - I would not like to locate the bleepin' orginal. I have 1200 songs. I am not going to sit there and play the CD shuffle.

Apple - you suck big time on this one. I'm gonna spend some time on iPod lounge to see if I can work my way through this. But I'm massively pissed off.

The Ski Boy is going to have the same problem. This afternoon I finished configuring and customizing my pretty decent desktop machine into the Ski Boy's new computer. One of the things I did was move all of his very legal music (CDs for every single song) from his old machine to the new one. I'm going to run into the same issue with that machine.

I am furious.

UPDATE: iPod Lounge to the rescue. This forum post bailed me out. It showed me the sneaky way to get my music from my iPod back up to Ping.

UPDATE #2: Well, sneaky way worked to get all my music over. However, it came over completely unorganized in very random folders. I was disgusted and deleted it. But it dawns on me that maybe I should have given iTunes the opportunity to organize - at least within iTunes.

Man. What a goat rope.

I Was Bad

Sun, 27 Feb 2005 21:46:03 GMT

Friday, I took a quick twenty minute break from work, zoomed over to REI and purchased a Garmin GPSMAP 60CS GPS. It is a very expensive unit. However, I had two hefty gift cards that covered the bulk of the purchase. So, it wasn't quite as bad as it could have been.

The GPSMAP 60CS may be the coolest GPS ever - big color screen, fast loading, tons of features, and most importantly, a big honking antenna!

So, I've got to perform the GPS's initial setup. When you initially configure a GPS, you load in your home coordinates, set the date/time, calibrate the compass, etc. The factory loaded home coordinates are the mothership coordinates - which happen to be Taiwan. When I display the map page, a map of Taiwan comes up and the home waypoint is "GRMTWN". Which I would guess is short for Garmin Town. It could also be Garmin - Taiwan. But, it's cute nevertheless - that when you first turn on your GPS in Anchorage, Alaska that the GPS is insisting that you are Taiwan. However, as soon as it gets its bearings - i.e. homes in on the satellites, it will figure out that it has moved from the tropics to the Frozen North. Anyhoo, to celebrate, I'm taking it out on its first geocaching trip today. And what a day for geocaching: 32 degrees and bright sun. The snow looks marvelous!!!!

Doings on the tech gear front

Fri, 25 Feb 2005 05:13:40 GMT

I finally got off the indecision dime and made a decision on the laptop front. At the top of my list was a Mac G4 15" Powerbook. However, Powerbooks and the Microsoft world of Corporate America just don't go well together. And it's not Apple's fault. And we don't think Microsoft is an monopoly????

After giving up my Powerbook dream, I had my eye on a red Voodoo Envy - it was sooooo cool. However, it was way too expensive - $3500 plus $200 for shipping. And all that for a machine that was really somewhat underpowered.

So, I ended up ordering an HP Pavilion zv5000t. Fully tricked out with a 3 GHZ Pentium 4 chip, 1 Gb of memory, 15" widescreen with a "brite" coating, 60 Gb hard drive, XP Pro, MS Office Small Business Suite, and most importantly, the 3 year fully extended warranty. All that for $2300 - including shipping. I simply got way more bang for my buck. Plus, I've had excellent luck with HP repair (unlike Sony - but that's a whole 'nuther story).

So, the as yet to be named laptop will ship on March 11th. In the name department I'm torn between "Packer" (a play on the name "Packard") or "Vince" - Vince being derived from Vince Lombardi coach of the Green Bay Packers. Get it?

So - what should the new name be? Packer or Vince?

A Big Apple Disappointment

Thu, 13 Jan 2005 03:23:52 GMT

Yesterday was the big day on the Apple Computer front - Steve Job's Macworld keynote address. The keynote is where all the new big products are announced.

For the past two months, I've eagerly awaited this keynote - I've been hoping for a G5 based powerbook - a very hot Mac laptop. However, no such luck. No announcements at all on the laptop front. sigh...

I think what I'll do is see if I can borrow Mom's powerbook for a few weeks. I want to test drive her powerbook in our Windows corporate environment. If I can get it to work reasonably well, then I'll hang tough on the laptop front until this summer - when rumor has it that a new G5 powerbook will be released.

If I can't get Mom's powerbook to work within Corporate America, then I'll go the Windows laptop route. sigh...

U2 iPod Heaven

Tue, 11 Jan 2005 06:08:15 GMT

One of the Ski Boy's Christmas presents was the very nifty Limited Edition U2 iPod. We've been ripping CD's right and left for the past two weeks.

Tonight, using the spiffy little stereo connection kit that Mom gave Peter for Christmas, we hooked up the iPod to our downstairs Bose system.

Voila!!!! Shuffled tunes in glorious Bose sound providing background music for a vicious game of Scrabble (of which I lost, badly).

Woe is Us on the Cable Modem Froint

Tue, 11 Jan 2005 04:05:26 GMT

We just cannot get our cable modem issues nailed. We thought it might be internal wiring, but that does not appear to be the case. So, I'm going to swamp (that should read "swap" but somehow "swamp" also seemed appropriate) out our cable modem tomorrow - perhaps it's just bad hardware...

If that does not prove to be the issue, then it's time to call out the Ninja Techs. I'll want a new drop run into the house. This is just no fun.

I WANT MY BROADBAND BACK!!!!!

Google's Patented Pigeon Ranking System

Fri, 07 Jan 2005 04:59:39 GMT

Who knew that the smarts behind Google's search technology are pigeons!!!

Here's an excerpt from Google's Pigeon Technology Whitepaper.

By collecting flocks of pigeons in dense clusters, Google is able to process search queries at speeds superior to traditional search engines, which typically rely on birds of prey, brooding hens or slow-moving waterfowl to do their relevance rankings.

When a search query is submitted to Google, it is routed to a data coop where monitors flash result pages at blazing speeds. When a relevant result is observed by one of the pigeons in the cluster, it strikes a rubber-coated steel bar with its beak, which assigns the page a PigeonRank value of one. For each peck, the PigeonRank increases. Those pages receiving the most pecks, are returned at the top of the user's results page with the other results displayed in pecking order.

ipodmyphoto!

Thu, 06 Jan 2005 04:24:35 GMT

A little mini fad is blossoming out there in Internet Land - ipodmyphoto. Basically, what one does is send in a picture of a person, animal, thing, whatever to the ipodmyphoto folks and they ipod-i-fy the picture. They turn the shot into a very cool picture that bears a great deal of resemblance to the current ipod advertising style.

I, who am totally unable to resist anything so new, hip, and terminally geeky, sent in four photos to be ipodified as Christmas gifts. They turned out fabulously well.

Over the next four days, I'll post the pictures so you too can see how neat they are!!!

First up is Mom and the Stock Market Bull. This picture was taken this summer outside of New York Stock Exchange.

Back on the Information Autoban!

Thu, 30 Dec 2004 05:24:39 GMT

The cable guy came by yesterday. We had not one, but several iffy coax connectors. He replaced all of them and now life is very good. We're back speeding along at 1 Mb downstream. A vast improvement.

Dial-up is sooooooo painful!

Speaking of coax, I wrote the word coaxed the other day. I had in the mind the persuaded meaning of coaxed. However, I've been in the telecom biz for so long, that my brain no longer interprets the written coaxed as persuaded. Instead, I see it as co-ax - the black cable that carries your cable tv signal.