Tritone Substitution

Anyone who still follows this blog...

2011-11-17T12:09:00.001-08:00

I'm sorry. This blog is terrible. Follow me on:
Google Plus
Twitter

Or friend me on Facebook.

I don't blog here anymore (evidently).

It's been a while...

2011-02-21T10:42:00.000-08:00

I just got a spam comment on my blog this morning... in coming over here to delete it, I realized that it's been nearly four months since I last posted.

There are two reason for this:

As of last August, I have a new job I love, which keeps me quite busy

Also as of last August, I have a fantastic woman in my life whom I love, and we're getting married in less than four months! (I proposed on January 3.)

Given that wedding planning is my primary occupation right now (when I'm out of the office, of course), I don't really have time to expound much more on those things today. But, I wanted to share the news with those who actually read the stuff I put up here... life is going really well!

Pay no attention to the title...

2010-10-27T07:16:00.000-07:00

It's actually a quintet, of course:

Super Mario Bassoon Quartet - Dorkly Video

Wow.

2010-09-16T09:15:00.000-07:00

This morning, on my way to work, the local jazz station played a new recording by Cynthia Felton: an interesting bass-and-vocal duet of Duke Ellington's "In a Mellow Tone."

And I said to myself, I said, "Wow."

Then I found her new album on CDBaby and listened to the previews of the other tunes (all of which are from the Ellington songbook).

And I said, "Wow."

This is high praise from me, as I generally don't enjoy listening to female jazz singers, with the notable exceptions of Diana Krall, Jane Monheit & Stacey Kent. Well, add another name to that list of mine, and probably at the very top. Well, she & Diana can duke it out.

Much praise has been lavished on this new recording, so I'll leave it to the professional reviewers to give more in-depth analyses. My recommendation: just buy it.

Wow.

Security: Not the fault of the OS anymore

2010-06-03T11:01:00.000-07:00

The headline of the article I've linked below is spot-on. Security isn't about measures taken by the operating system any longer, it's about measures taken by users themselves.

For instance, as an IT professional with a good knowledge of computer security practices, if I wanted to I could work every day with Windows and remain malware-free just by being conscientious about what I do with the computer. Windows is certainly an unstable house of cards in that regard, but if you know how to use it you can be just as safe as anyone else, even without anti-malware software installed.

Even OS X has recently had an outbreak of malware, but it requires unwary users to install unverified software in order to infect machines. I still maintain that it requires a much less watchful eye on system processes to keep a Mac clean, but it is by no means immune.

However, I do take issue with the final paragraphs of the linked article. It's true that Microsoft is still the biggest target, and that very fact makes exploitation more lucrative and therefore more likely to be attempted. However, the underpinnings of the operating system still rely on legacy code with a much more relaxed security model. The Unix architecture on which OS X is based is by far a much more stable design.

Windows isn't attacked day and night merely because it's got larger market share; while that's a contributing factor, it's also got many more exploitable attack vectors. And, as John Gruber has pointed out in the past, OS X isn't "utterly impervious to attack because it’s protected by magic leprechauns." It's just better.

But, to reiterate the main point here, either one is only as secure as its users, who have to be quite a bit more fastidious if they've got a Windows machine on their desk.

When it comes to security, it's the user, not the OS | Macworld

Progressive Regression?

2010-05-28T16:14:00.000-07:00

Fact #1:

In the aftermath of my wife's death last November, I'm doing really well. I'm moving forward with my life, beginning to enjoy it in the way she always said she wanted me to after she was gone.

Fact #2:

I put my wedding ring back on yesterday (right hand), after 4 months of leaving it in a bag with hers.

The former has been a long time coming. It was always obvious that, while I was taking care of Lauren as cystic fibrosis slowly robbed her of life, nearly all of my energy, time, and love were directed toward her. I visited her in the hospital pretty much every day while she was admitted, and life pretty much consisted of work, hospital, sleep, do it again.

After she passed away, I found myself with a lot of extra energy, time, and love that no longer had a target. I directed much of it toward my church, getting even more involved in the music ministry and attending more services and Bible studies than I had in a long time. I even played an offertory on the piano one Sunday morning less than 3 weeks after she died. In addition, I began spending more time with friends I hadn't seen regularly in a while, and I started meeting new people (a huge undertaking, given how introverted I am).

While it was good for me to get out, and I was glad to have all those opportunities, for the most part I wasn't genuinely excited by any of it. The support from friends old and new was great, and I did have a deepening peace and even joy in Christ throughout the experience, but there was a large part of me that was afraid of enjoying my newfound freedom. It felt like allowing myself to be happy would mean finding pleasure in the fact that my wife was no longer around. In January I decided to stop wearing my ring; it seemed appropriate, as at that point I had dealt with my grief in important and substantial ways, but as I look back I see that I was trying to distance myself emotionally from the perceived betrayal of Lauren's memory. In essence I was trying to become a new man, disavowing encumbrances of the past and trying to force myself to move on with my life.

Much has happened since then. The two most important events, the Writer's Conference and the celebration of Lauren's birthday, were previously chronicled here on my blog. And in the course of everything that has transpired I've felt myself actually changing: not because I've forced myself to, or even out of any desire to make my life different, but because that's what moving forward is all about. I've been able to truly enjoy my life as it now is, and find a way to keep Lauren's memory alive without either clinging to it or pushing it away.

In a sense, Fact #2 above seems a bit like a step back. But it's not! As I put my ring back on yesterday morning, I did so with a view toward fully accepting the realities of both the past and the present. I have become someone new; not because of anything I did, but because God has loved and sustained me through it all—in many ways, through the support of family and friends who have been there for me through the past months.

I don't feel like I've "gotten over" anything, or that I'm "finally done" with some process; of course, life will continue to have challenges both related and unrelated to my widowerhood. But I'm realizing that life has generally become a lot brighter, and I'm glad to have gotten where I now am.

Today

2010-04-28T06:46:00.000-07:00

Prologue: I don't know if I'm just extra-emotional these days, or if I'm embarking on a new stage of being more personal in this blog, but here's another visceral post about what's on my mind and heart right now.

It's Lauren's birthday today. She would've been 30 if CF hadn't taken her nearly six months ago.

I'm listening to that Savage Garden album (Affirmation) she always used to play while she was getting ready in the morning. When she was still working, I heard this music nearly every day coming out of the the CD player she kept in the bathroom. My favorite from it, "I Knew I Loved You Before I Met You," is currently playing.

Brad sits and listens for a bit...

Ooh. "Crash and Burn" really hits me differently now. I'm realizing that I haven't listened to these tunes in a long time.

Anyway, I've taken the day off of work. I'm planning to go up and spend some time with my in-laws today, and we're going to see an Angels game. Then, since I realized I'd be home this morning, I've arranged to have a plumber come fix a faucet and I'll run a couple errands before I head to Ontario. (Finally I'll get the Prius back after a month-long repair job!)

More listening...

"You Can Still Be Free" is a great song, and appropriate for today. As I've mentioned before, the peace and strength I've had in this whole process of dealing with Lauren's death has been amazing. I've never quite understood it, but it's getting easier to accept the gift of joy God has presented.

As I recently told a friend, I'm doing really well in general, but I'm a little afraid of embracing that "doing well" too tightly for fear of losing my grip on the memory of Lauren. She assured me that I'll never forget; of course that's obvious, but I can't claim that everything running through my mind has been completely rational these days. It's nice to be nudged toward reality from time to time, though... I do have a tendency to get lost in thoughts and theories and "what if"s.

Well, the album is over, and the beginning of the plumber's arrival window is approaching, so I should get dressed. As I've told people over and over, the thing I need most right now is prayer, so if you happen to run across this please keep me in yours.

UPDATE: I feel compelled to add this quote from Lauren:
"You never know how much you can face until you turn around and see that it's now behind you."
Very well said.

640 ought to be enough for anybody

2010-04-06T10:52:00.000-07:00

And now, back to your regularly scheduled programming: today's Wondermark is fabulous.

And in regard to that title... this is post 640 to this blog, in nearly 6 years. Check here for the "source" of my (mis-)quotation.

Remembering Lauren

2010-03-31T19:24:00.000-07:00

I don't often get very intimate on my blog. I usually just talk academically about silly things like technology or grammar. Or link to my favorite webcomics and authors. But please indulge me as I share some personal stuff.

First, as most of my real-life friends know, my wife Lauren passed away last November (that's her own personal blog in that link there). I haven't spoken of her death much online, deciding to keep things private for a while. Aside from Facebook, that is, but my FB friends are generally people I know from outside the Internet anyway.

She had cystic fibrosis, a genetic condition that caused her in her final years to have increasingly frequent and debilitating cases of pneumonia and other lung infections. Despite her disease, she was an amazingly positive woman; for nearly her entire life, she was able to make CF be merely "something about her" and not allow the disability to define her. In fact, the link at the beginning of this paragraph goes to one of her three (3!) blogs: she was trained as a scientist and also freelanced as a writer. She spent a lot of time distilling medical research about CF into information that average sufferers and caregivers could use to understand the illness and its treatment.

In addition, she was a strong Christian (this link goes to her blog where she wrote devotionals reflecting on passages from the Bible). In our nearly-decade-long relationship she was a great encouragement to me, and I to her, as we pressed onward with faith in God and toward the hope of our future dwelling in Heaven. I'm so glad now that she's being given a perfect body, unmarred by the strife of this present age, in which to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.

But providing this brief description of an amazing woman, my wife of more than 6 years, is not what prompted me to write about her. You see, in her "side career" as a writer, she attended the Mount Hermon Christian Writers Conference on three separate occasions. While there, she made many friends and touched many lives. She was working on a book called "Dear Future Husband" in which she intended to publish selections from a large group of letters she wrote (beginning at age 14) addressed to the man she would one day marry. The last one begins "Dear Brad," and she gave me the whole set as a wedding gift.

Even that awesome writing project (which never got published) isn't quite why I'm remembering her in this post. One of the friends she made at the Writers Conference is Austin Boyd, another talented multi-career individual who for a time worked at the same scientific consulting firm for which Lauren compiled environmental emissions inventories at government installations across the state and the country. Just three days after she died, Austin proposed a scholarship/award to be given at the 2010 conference in her memory, to honor someone else who has withstood many challenges while shining the light of Christ through the written word.

Along with Lauren's parents, I went on Monday night, March 29, to this year's conference to see the presentation of the inaugural Lauren Beyenhof True Grit Award. Between Austin and his agent, Les Stobbe, they were able to present $1000 in her memory. In the course of his presentation, Austin showed a video interview with Lauren and me which had been recorded in 2007. The award went to Rachel Marks, a woman who's fought with cancer but seems as plucky and determined as Lauren ever was to keep hardship from getting in her way.

The whole experience of attending the conference for this presentation was humbling and awe-inspiring (and, as you'd expect, quite emotional). I was able to connect with a part of Lauren's life I hadn't really experienced before, and I heard from many people whose lives she had touched with her ebullience and love. It lifted my own spirits to be in a mountain retreat, communing with the Lord and with other people who knew my wife. I'm glad that Austin paid her this very special tribute, and that I was invited to share in an event to honor her life. I know Lauren would've been confused and taken aback by all the attention, but she and her memory deserve it all.

Thanks, Austin, for creating the award; and Les, for helping to present it. Thanks, Mom & Dad K., for raising a fantastic woman who captivated me and is an integral part of who I've become. And thanks most of all to God, who orchestrated our lives that we might find and fulfill each other in such a wonderful way.

For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.

~ Jeremiah 29:11

Hey, lookit that!

2010-03-16T14:42:00.000-07:00

My blog address is now officially on my own domain (augmentedfourth.com)! Blogger is still hosting & publishing everything, but I finally got around to making my server's DNS point to them instead of using the amateurish blogspot.com URL.

Also, in playing with blog stuff I was poking around some old posts of mine. Apparently, in October 2005, I saw into the mind of Steve Jobs. Everything I predicted/desired in that post has come true in the years since.

How Star Trek should have ended...

2010-03-14T16:15:00.001-07:00

I really like last year's new Star Trek film, and this cartoon parody is hilarious. The best part is at the very end.

Geek code - why do I do this, again?

2010-02-28T14:29:00.000-08:00

So, it was pointed out to me today that my current Geek Code, shown at the bottom of every page of this blog, is significantly out of date. As I always mention when publishing these updates, version 3.12 of the Code was formulated in 1996, so my available options for the various categories aren't particularly reflective of how things really work in the world these days.

In any case, here's my new Code:

-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- Version: 3.12 GIT/MU d+@ s:+>: a->+++ C++> ULXB++++$ L+++ M++ w--() !O !V P++ E--- W+++ N o++ K? PS PE+ Y+ PGP++ t !5 X- R- tv+@ b++ DI++++ D--- G++ e*++ h r? y? ------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------

If you really care about knowing what that all means, you either know the code already, or you can get it decoded for you here.

Here I am...

2010-02-26T12:25:00.000-08:00

Oh hi, blog. Sorry to be neglecting you. But ultra-short-form posts on Twitter and Facebook are so much easier. I hope you're doing OK. If I think about anything I want to share that organizes itself into paragraphs in my mind, I'll come back and post again. But I haven't forgotten you. I promise.

More amazingness from Andy Ihnatko

2010-02-19T09:33:00.000-08:00

From a recent interview Andy gave to the Tactical Pants Blog:

If you could rename the iPad, what would you call it? Why?

I have no problems with the name. But if I were to rename it, I’d probably go with “Severe Eye Injury” or maybe “Adorable Baby Ducks In Horrible Imminent Danger.” It would be Apple’s ultimate statement of confidence: “Our new tablet computer is so handy and useful that you won’t give a damn _what_ it’s called.”

As usual, he lives up to his signature wit throughout, but this answer exemplifies precisely why I read everything that ever comes out of this man's head and onto a computer screen.

Andy Ihnatko on His Tactical Internet Pants and Apple's iPad | Tactical Pants Blog

On Predictability

2009-11-19T16:14:00.001-08:00

I've been thinking a bit lately, and I've come up with this maxim:

Anything predictable is exploitable.

I'm going to confine this to network traffic at this point, since it's the only application for which I've given this much thought, but I'm willing to bet that it holds true in other areas as well.

Keep in mind that exploitability is not, in itself, a bad thing. A Web browser predicts that an http:// server is running on port 80 and exploits that. With that assumption, most people won't have to know what the previous sentence even means. Sometimes you run across sites where you have to enter "dummydomain.net:8080" in your address bar for servers that aren't using port 80 for Web traffic, but the ability to assume and predict a standard port is good.

On the other hand, exploitation can be bad. In old TCP stacks, the sequence numbers always started with 1 and incremented from there. This ability to predict traffic and forge legitimate responses can allow malicious machines to hijack sessions through what's called a "man-in-the-middle attack." More modern implementations of TCP/IP start the sequence number randomly; this prevents prediction and exploitation.

There are many steps in a chain at which predictability can lead to exploitability when it comes to network security, and not all of them are even technological. Take, for instance, the predictability that some percentage of users will click the link in a spam email message. Given that mass amounts of email can be sent at virtually no charge, and there is always some small percentage that will respond positively, there is still a return on investment that makes spam campaigns profitable. [0]

The same thing applies to cryptography. The only way to have a message encrypted well enough in transit to prevent decryption is to create ciphertext that is as close to pattern-free true randomness as possible. If there's any way to detect patterns, and therefore create predictability, exploitation will soon follow.

I can go on, but I think I'll stop here for now. I think, however, that the ability for prediction to beget exploitation is the driving force behind security these days (not limited to computer security). For instance, it's the regulated unpredictability of financial systems like the stock market that keeps people from reliably exploiting them for their own gain!

I might have more thoughts later, but I just wanted to put this out there while it was on my mind.

[0] "Spamalytics: An Empirical Analysis of Spam Marketing Conversion." Chris Kanich, Christian Kreibich, Kirill Levchenko, Brandon Enright, Geoffrey M. Voelker, Vern Paxson, and Stefan Savage. Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery 52(9):99-107, September 2009.

Genius!

2009-11-17T16:51:00.000-08:00

This is an awesome quote from one of my favorite tech columnists. It's the final line in the linked article.

Remember that to Google, the millions of people who use the Internet are like one big immense sofa with thousands of cushions. It’s always rummaging through our user experiences and finding loose change that we never knew we lost and never miss once it’s been taken.

- Andy Ihnatko, Chicago Sun-Times

Pull Quoting

2009-08-07T22:05:00.000-07:00

“Conservative activists don’t want to have a conversation,” said Jennifer Crider, a spokeswoman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “They want to disrupt.”

Hm... that sounds familiar. Maybe a bit like the liberal activists while Republicans were in power?

Can somebody actually have a conversation sometime, please?

Health Plan Opponents Make Voices Heard - NYTimes.com

iPhone 3.0 (3GS) Voice Control problems

2009-07-03T14:06:00.000-07:00

OK, so I really like the new iPhone. However, its Voice Control feature is really not up to snuff.

Firstly, if I want to dial the phone by voice, I have to take the phone out of my pocket and speak into it—even if I've got a Bluetooth headset connected. My old RAZR let me voice dial into the headset by pressing the button; why won't the iPhone? The headset button just makes the iPhone redial your last outgoing number, and only if you hold it down for a couple of seconds.

Secondly, if I have a playlist containing only podcast episodes, Voice Control won't play it. Apparently Voice Control will only play songs for some reason. I've got multiple podcast playlists (one for the short daily ones that I want to listen to first, and another for the other longer ones that come out less frequently), so when I want to switch between them I have to glance down at the screen.

Thirdly, and probably most important to me, there's no way to use Voice Control to start a playlist in shuffle mode—which, once my podcasts are finished, is exactly what I want to do. I have to start a playlist, then separately issue a "shuffle" voice command or shake the phone (if 'shake to shuffle' is enabled). While this could a serviceable enough option, it adds one to the Skip Count of the first item in the playlist! I haven't skipped the song; I just wanted to start the playlist in shuffle mode. This throws off my smart playlists, some of which use Skip Count and Last Skipped Time to determine which songs should be included.

The worst part of this two-steps-to-shuffle bit, however, is how long it takes—especially while I'm driving the car. I should be able to issue a single voice command, not go through the whole rigmarole twice just to end up how I want it. Not to mention that it takes nearly 3 seconds of holding the button down just to start Voice Control each time, and then it may or may not understand my command properly the first time anyway.

Actually, in the process of writing this post, I discovered way to get a playlist going in shuffle mode without incrementing any songs' Skip Counts, but it takes three steps! First, issue the Voice command "shuffle", then it says "no music is playing; do you want to play music now?" So then you have to wait for the beep and say "yes," which starts playing your whole library in shuffle mode. Then you can start Voice Control again and tell it to play a particular playlist, which will then start in shuffle mode.

Apple, please think of the people who are using your products in the car! Make it simple to place calls and initiate shuffled playlists without looking at the device! There's a "shuffle" button at the top of every playlist in the visual interface; shouldn't that be an option in the spoken interface as well?

I realize that, at iPhone OS 3.0's introduction, they said that Voice Control wasn't totally complete. However, its inclusion at all was one of the big things that convinced me to finally get one, so I'm a bit disappointed that it was added on without the usual polish of most Apple products.

Hudzee - Hard Drive storage

2009-05-27T09:31:00.000-07:00

I just found out about a new hard drive storage case which is actually pretty neat. Most technology enthusiasts and computer professionals have at least a few hard drives just sitting around, full of old data which we're not quite willing to discard just yet. Or maybe it's a new drive you just picked up cheap at a swap meet or rummage sale.

Sure, you can put these bare drives into anti-static bags, but that can get clumsy. It's hard to store a bunch of bagged drives, and it's even harder to figure out what's on each one.

The Hudzee helps you safely store and organize your drives. It's a plastic case with a bit of padding on the inside to keep the drive's delicate components from getting scuffed or scratched. For anyone who regularly deals with hard drives—whether it's storing spares in case of failure, archiving old data, or for transporting large amounts of data via "sneakernet"—these cases are very cool.

I recently ordered a few, and I'm really impressed with how well the drive mechanisms are protected. They're cushioned, but still given plenty of room inside the case to breathe. There's also a window on the outside of the case for labeling, so you can remind yourself of the drive's contents or purpose when it's sitting on the shelf.

I definitely recommend the Hudzee drive case. It's an easy way to keep your data protected, secure, and easy to organize.

$8 each ($65 for 10).

HUDZEE - Keep Your Internal Drives Under Control
(via The Adventures of Systems Boy!)

Today's FoxTrot

2009-04-19T14:57:00.001-07:00

Bill Amend quit doing FoxTrot comics on weekdays, but he still draws them for Sundays. Once again, it's a puzzle, and today's was pretty fun. I figured out all of the letters in my head, though two of them I solved by inference and not mathematically (I seriously can't remember how to do differentials, and I didn't bother with the three-digit divisor).

Fox Trot — Gocomics.com

My (brief) adventures with AppleTV

2009-04-09T10:05:00.000-07:00

So I bought an AppleTV yesterday. I had been advised against it by two different people, especially since my primary intended use was going to be for playing videos from Hulu through the Boxee plugin. I'd been told that the Flash video playback on the device was no good, and both of the people to whom I spoke had either uninstalled Boxee or gotten rid of the device altogether.

However, I'm stubborn, and I figured my standards couldn't be too demanding. Hulu on my iMac looks awesome, even through Boxee, so how much worse could the AppleTV be? I still watch cable and DVDs through the coaxial input on my TV, after all! Also, my TV is a 4:3 CRT, and I haven't even been exposed to the fancy-schmancy High Definition stuff that's all the rave these days. I just wanted to see it for myself, so I went to the Apple Store after work yesterday and picked up a 40GB ATV.

I thought that my set, with its HD component video inputs, was capable of displaying 720p HD— but apparently it isn't. I had to settle for standard-def 480i output from the device, which was the first disappointment of the evening. I set the machine to sync with my iMac's iTunes library, then I sat down to eat dinner with my wife (who was finally discharged from the hospital yesterday! hopefully she stays well for a while this time).

After I finished cleaning up from dinner and loading the dishwasher, all of the lights in the house suddenly turned off. They flickered back on briefly, but soon the house was dark. Thankfully, it wasn't yet 7pm, and Daylight Saving Time meant that there was still enough light coming through the windows that we weren't entirely enshrouded. My AppleTV adventure was cut short, though. I turned on my (battery-powered) EeePC in order to look online for the power company's phone number, only to realize that the outage had also turned off my modem and router. I ended up using Google's 800-GOOG-411 service to get ahold of them anyway, and was told that it was a known outage that should be resolved by 7:46pm.

Around 7:30, the lights came back on. I turned the AppleTV back on and resumed the iTunes sync. I let the AppleTV play the latest episode of the FLOSS Weekly podcast while it finished syncing and I surfed the Web on my netbook. This was the best use of the device I'd had yet... the ability to listen to podcasts & surf the Web while downstairs in the living room and not holed up in front of the iMac in my home office.

After the sync was finished, the AppleTV wanted to update itself to the latest Apple firmware, which I allowed it to do. Then I created the USB patchstick with my SanDisk thumb drive so I could hack the box and install Boxee. It installed and ran just fine, so I fired up Hulu. The video there was incredibly choppy. It got better when I turned off the 480p high-resolution stream in my Hulu account and restarted the stream of Monday's episode of Chuck, but it still wasn't smooth. This was very frustrating, and the Boxee CBS player had the same problem. Oddly, the Comedy Central player was better, but still not great.

Boxee was awesome when I set it up to play video files over the network from my Mac. I had a House episode I'd downloaded recently since my cable box's DVR cut off the end of the show, and the XviD file played great streaming through Boxee.

However, my main attempted use for the AppleTV was going to be a replacement for cable, watching all the shows I like with Hulu and through Apple's iTunes Store. I wanted to make sure I got all my video legitimately, through paid or ad-supported Internet means, and not have to resort to downloading all my shows from the shadier corners of the Internet. Since Hulu wasn't satisfactory as a cable replacement (and Big Bang Theory doesn't have any legal Internet distribution, anyway), I restored the device to its factory settings and put it back in the box to return it to the Apple Store.

It made for an enjoyable evening of hacking around (I even enabled ssh access to the AppleTV, which was pretty fun just for the hack value), but it's just not viable as a replacement for cable. I'll probably need a full-scale Mac mini for that, but if I'm going to run full-on OS X I don't want to be using a CRT with overscan, anyway. I'll wait until I can afford both a mini and a new flat-panel TV with HDMI input, which probably won't be for a while.

Apple's new anouncement

2009-03-17T12:43:00.000-07:00

First off... this is probably the very first Apple announcement in at least four years that I didn't know about in advance. Seriously, the first time I heard about Tuesday's press event was in the NYT article linked below. I feel this is my first step toward becoming a "cranky geek."

In any case, I've finally been thinking more about getting an iPhone, and this new wave of features (and the speculated cheaper new hardware in the summer) is making it ever more attractive.

The oddest thing to me about this report, though, is the description of their new "pay for program enhancements" feature in the App Store. When I read this, my first reaction was to think, "Cool! People can now offer free trial apps and then charge for an upgrade to the full version, like Mac apps have done for years!" However, they've explicitly stated that any app offered originally for free can't have any paid add-ons, so this model won't be available. If developers want to offer trial software, they'll still have to put separate free and paid apps into the Store.

I also hear that they're upgrading the synchronization of personal information from the Internet to the device in the form of direct CalDAV support. Sounds cool; I'm officially considering this seriously now.

Apple Shows Off Next Version of iPhone Software - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

Geek Code update

2009-02-27T09:22:00.000-08:00

Well, I haven't updated my Geek Code in about 18 months, so I was due for a refresh. Of course, everything is horribly dated since the code itself was last updated in 1996, but here's where I am today:

-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- Version: 3.12 GIT/MU d+() s:+>: a->+++ C++> ULXB++++$ L++ M++ w--() !O !V P++ E--- W++ N o++ K? PS PE+ Y+ PGP- t !5 X- R tv+ b++ DI++ D--- G++ e*++ h--- r+++ y+++? ------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------

(my geek code decoded)

That "25 Random Things" meme

2009-02-07T09:17:00.000-08:00

I don't think I've been "tagged" yet to do a "25 Random Things About Me" list on Facebook, but I've seen a number of them. While I think it's an interesting idea, I dread getting into it since it would probably become a big multi-day project that I'd spend endless hours tinkering with and refining, and then agonizing over the finality of hitting the "Post" button.

The following article from the New York Times takes a sardonic look at the whole phenomenon, and until I get around to writing such a list (if I ever do), please consider Amy Harmon's "generic" contribution to be my own.

25 Random Tips for the Busy Facebook User - The Lede Blog - NYTimes.com

Val Kilmer to be... blah, blah, blah

2009-01-30T11:43:00.000-08:00

I don't care so much about this article itself; I focused more on the accompanying photograph. Is that seriously the guy who played The Saint? I know that was 12 years ago, but he seems to have aged nearly twice that.

Kilmer to be king of Bacchus in New Orleans parade - Yahoo! News