half-pie

onset of fever

2009-06-25T10:43:04Z

I’ve been a faithful user of Shaun Inman‘s Mint, a ravishingly beautiful and terrifically useful self-hosted stats application for websites, for nearly four years now. Even though I do have Google Analytics installed as well¹, Mint is what I refer to most often: it’s always up-to-date and it quickly and concisely shows me what I want to know.

Mint showed a really interesting combination of design, UI skills and über-coding ability all rolled up together, and I’d wondered what Mr Inman would do next.

That next thing is Fever°, an RSS feed reader. Fever° is unusual in that it’s an application that you need to host on your own webserver, much as you might self-host a WordPress blog. It also costs money.

I’ve bought it, and been using it for almost a week, and I can say that it is money well spent.

As you’d expect, it’s lovely to look at, and works perfectly well as a feed reader. It has lots of keyboard shortcuts, and plays nicely with Fluid.app. A particularly nice aspect of Fever° is the iPhone version of the site: it’s perfectly optimised to the screen, and when saved as a webclip² behaves almost identically to a native application – even down to being chromeless and having a startup screen.

But the most interesting thing about Fever° is the splitting of feeds into two broad (though not necessarily exclusive) categories: “Sparks”, and “Kindling” (you’ll get used to these names fairly quickly). Kindling are all your must-read feeds, the things you follow religiously.

Sparks are all those interesting feeds you’ve subscribed to but may be just too high-volume to read all of. What Fever° does is scan these, together with the Kindling feeds, to detect the most “important” or most linked items; assigning and ranking these with a rating based on human body temperatures and placing these your “hot” list for priority reading.

I’ve started using this… but I’ve come to the conclusion that I need a lot more feeds in the Sparks category. I’m open to suggestions.

One worry with self-hosted applications is installation. If you host your own website on your own domain, you are probably mostly there already. The first step, once you’ve created a database on your webserver for Fever° to use, is to download and run the Fever° compatibility suite. You have to do this, and your webserver pass the test, before you can purchase Fever°³. But if you get this far, you are actually 90% done on the installation – because once you enter the activation code into the compatibility suite, the rest of Fever° installs itself.

This has to be one of the most painless web application installation processes I have ever experienced. I hope other developers are taking notes.

The next step is to load it up with feeds. It was easy to import my feedlist from Google Reader. The next additions were the various shared items lists from friends in Reader; and after that I thought about some suitable additions to Sparks. High-volume and interesting link blogs seem like a good idea, so I added in Slashdot, Digg, Metafilter, among others. Done!

So… why use Fever° when Google Reader already does this? And why spend US$30 when there’s cheaper ways of doing it? Here’s three reasons:

I already use and love Inman’s Mint. I therefore had a pretty good idea of what Inman, a genius, idiosyncratic, solo designer-developer, had the ability to come up with. I like supporting genius, idiosyncratic, solo designer-developers (Loren Brichter is another).
I like self-hosted applications, up to a point, but I also like not depending too much on any one provider for anything. (To put it another way: I don’t want Google to be a single point of failure in my life.) So a plurality of web applications is A Good Thing in my book.
Fever° is cool, and I fully expect it to be further developed in interesting ways. For example, sharing links between friends is one big strength of apps like Twitter, Friendfeed and Reader. Something similar for Fever° would be brilliant.

Which brings me to Fever°‘s annoyances. It’s only a version 1.0 application, but even so I’m finding very little to carp about – in fact the following just seems like whining:

On the iPhone, external pages resulting from tapping on outward links appear in a little frame above the page that allows you to easily go back into your Fever° session. The problem is that when you do, it’s displayed very very small and you have to force a screen redraw by changing the orientation of the iPhone to horizontal and back again.
In a web browser, if there’s a refresh of the feed you are reading, you lose the article you are on. Of course, you can press “u” to see all unread items, so all is not lost.

But those are just minor things. Fever°⁴ is a ravishingly beautiful and terrifically useful self-hosted RSS Reader. You should really have a good look, even if you don’t buy it: a brush with the product of genius is always inspiring.

¹ People who write blogs are nothing if not obsessed about the number and nature of their readers; and Google Analytics provides a more common basis for comparison. How big is yours (audience, I mean).

² By tapping the “+” you can save a Fever° icon to your home screen – just as you can for many other websites, though with varying levels of eye-candy.

³ Presumably learning from his experiences with Mint, this compatibility suite part of the install makes absolutely sure that no-one who has paid money for Fever can fail to install it because of some non-standard server configuration (and it would seem that Mr Inman has seen it all with his experiences supporting Mint).

⁴ I’ve overdone it on the ° ° °. They do get tiresome, don’t they.

in me shed

2009-06-16T10:44:05Z

I couldn’t pass up this video.

The Punks Not Dad album is now available on iTunes.

[If you have trouble with this you can always ask the kids how to do it.]

XT for the iPhone?

2009-06-07T10:17:44Z

It’s been pretty hard to miss the fact that Telecom NZ have a new mobile network, XT. It’s all 3G, the latest and currently fastest of the mobile “generations”, and represents quite a step up from the old CDMA network that they put in at the beginning of this decade¹.

Telecom’s major rival, Vodafone New Zealand, also has a 3G network that uses pretty much similar technology. The difference lies mainly in the frequency bands used to carry the cellular signals. XT is mostly on the 850MHz band with the centre of some large cities on the 2100MHz band. Vodafone however uses 2100MHz in most of the major towns and cities with another band, 900MHz, as fill for the rest of the country.

From what I understand, 2100MHz is less able to penetrate buildings, and the cell coverage areas are smaller. On the other hand, both the 850MHz and 900MHz bands can deliver fast internet connections to sad geeks taking a dump in toilets that happen to be located in the middle of massed steel-reinforced concrete high-rise ~~faraday cages~~ buildings². The contra to this wonder of technology is that the capacity of the two lower frequency bands is much poorer (which accounts for why Telecom is supplementing its network with 2100MHz sites in some cities).

Which brings me to my phone. It’s a second generation iPhone, as my three regular readers will by now have tired of me talking about, and it’s currently loaded with a Vodafone SIM card. The 2nd gen iPhone can receive both the 2100 and 850MHz bands, the latter of course being unusable on Vodafone. When out of range of the 3G 2100MHz band it will drop back to an older, slower, 2G technology. Unfortunately this can happen quite a lot: on the bus to work; down the other end of my building; over the hill in the Wairarapa etc etc. Cue much whining.

So of course, I had to try a XT SIM card to see if I should switch over. Data speeds were faster. Of course they were: as the reporter from the NBR put it, “the cellular equivalent of being able to zoom up a new motorway before the ribbon’s cut” (or in this case, just after the ribbon-cutting ceremony).

And 3G coverage was better. Of course it was: the iPhone isn’t capable of receiving Vodafone’s 900MHz band that would match the coverage of XT’s 850MHz band.

After some reflection, I decided that that speed and coverage issues, while important, were not the whole story when it came to making a decision to switch cellular providers. There’s price; and there’s the rest of my communications business; and there’s some indefinable other stuff that’s the sum of my attitudes to and experience with both companies.

With price, XT has an advantage. Slightly. About $4 per month if I try and make something that matches what I have now from Vodafone; and to get that level of pricing I have to have my home phone on Telecom. If I want to avoid that, I need to get the next mobile plan up; and this would make the XT plan $14 per month more than my current plan.

This brings me to an interesting marketing device that both telcos employ: a mixture of loyalty bonuses and cross-product marketing. Both Vodafone and Telecom sell home phone, mobile, and broadband internet services; and typically if you get one service, you get a discount on the next one. So I save $10 per month on my broadband by having my toll-calls with Vodafone; and if I add in local calling and line rental I can get even faster, cheaper internet. Horizontally too: calls between mobiles on the same network can be had cheaper; Rebecca pays $6 per month for unlimited calls from her Vodafone mobile to mine; and I don’t have to pay the $6 at all for the reverse as I’ve been given that as a loyalty bonus when I re-signed up last year.

I’d lose all this if I shifted to XT. And to get the most benefit from changing over I’d have to switch over the whole home communications stack, and then buy a new mobile phone for Rebecca too (her SonyEricsson k770i won’t run on 850MHz).

Can’t see it happening.

So we’re left with the last criterion: the indefinable one. And I have to admit, I just like Vodafone more. Telecom aren’t quite the lumbering idiots of yore, but I’m still not really a fan. I’ve had more experience with Vodafone; some good times with their people when I worked for a corporate client of theirs; and smoother runs with their technology roaming overseas. I like that they have a real person on the other end of their corporate Twitter account who actually can fix things (and has for me, on one occasion); and I like that after the kerfuffle about the pricing on the original iPhone plans they sharpened their pencils in response.

So yeah, I’m staying with Vodafone. And who knows, in the next few days at WWDC Apple might announce a third generation iPhone that does 900MHz, rendering all I’ve written above, obsolete³.

¹ In what may have been the blunder of the decade by Telecom Mobile, given the lack of handsets available and general dead-endness of the technology.

² I can neither confirm nor deny the veracity of this cartoon.

³ Of course I won’t be able to turn my phone over until at least the middle of next year – my CFO (Rebecca) probably, and quite rationally, wouldn’t agree. I try telling her I could get a more expensive hobby, like cars, but it just doesn’t work.

never mind the butter...

2009-06-07T02:54:42Z

A few weeks ago there was a little flurry of excitement here in this far-flung corner of the ex-empire at news that John Lydon was advertising CountryLife butter in the UK. Even our Federated Farmers got into the act, with a press release containing the immortal words “Never mind the butter…”.

I actually quite like the ads – they’re a bit of a laugh. But I like this response even better:

It’s true. Punks Not Dad.

rosa (vi)

2009-06-03T08:54:51Z

Rosa’s sixth birthday today. She went off to school with a princess badge emblazoned with a giant “6”, so no-one could mistake the day, and a brand new pair of pink velvet trousers run up the previous evening by Rebecca.

And tonight, we went out for dinner. Yesterday I had asked her where, if she had the choice, would she like to go for a birthday dinner. She thought for a bit, and announced: “I’d like to have my Japanese dinner!”.

Turns out what she actually means is teriyaki squid at Chow in Woodward Street – and that’s what we did. The girls ate a plate of squid each, and tipped the sauce into their noodles and ate those too. What little remained they’ve brought home for the fridge. Lunch tomorrow will be exciting.

Rebecca and I had a bowl of curry each, some satay sticks and perhaps unnecessarily, some fishcakes too. Luckily, the staff at Chow, on learning that it was Rosa’s birthday, took hers off the bill. We had great service and lots of fun from the staff there.

We had to walk slowly back to the car, though Rosa, whose infectious happiness had made one of the staff jokingly call her “drunk on squid”, ran ahead and back all the way, covering twice our distance.

And needless to say, Bella wants to go there for her birthday, too.

mystery shopper position

2009-05-28T10:00:07Z

Do people actually fall for these?

Here’s an email I got the other day, sent from a PC in Chile, but supposedly for a company called “WA-Surveys”. Supposedly WA-surveys is a company based in Washington State, but oddly, the domain is registered to a Hong Kong company.

Anyway, the email started like this:

Thank you for your interest in the Mystery Shopper position.
Our company conducts surveys and evaluates other companies in order to help them achieve their performance goals. We offer an integrated suite of business solutions that enables corporations to achieve tangible results in the marketplace.

Nice. Someone’s been reading up on their corporate bullshit manual.

It goes on to offer a “contract” for mystery shopping:

You will be paid a commission of $100 for every duty you carry out, and bonus on your transportation allowance. Your task will be to evaluate and comment on customer service in a wide variety of restaurants, retail stores, casinos, shopping malls, banks and hotels in your area.

Sounds like fun, eh? There are a few qualifications though:

Qualities of a good Mystery Shopper:
* Is 21 years of age or older
* Loves to go shopping
* Is fair and objective
* Is ON TIME
* Is very observant and able to focus on details
* Is fairly intelligent

Well, that rules out a lot of potential employees. But wait! there’s more:

* Has patience
* Is detail oriented
* Is practical
* Types well
* Is trustworthy
* Explains well in writing
* Is discreet
* Loves to learn

Could be quite a learning experience, yes.

* Handles deadlines
* Has full internet access (at home or at work)

Mystery Shopping is fun and exciting but also must be approached very seriously and is definitely not for everyone.

Hard to know how they’ll get anyone for that job. It goes on, but I think you’ve got the picture by now.

So… there’s at least two ways this thing could play out.

They send me a cheque, ask me to cash it and use the money to “mystery shop” Western Union. Cheque bounces, but not before I’ve sent the cash away.
Worse (arguably), they deposit some money in my bank account, and then ask me to use that to “mystery shop” Western Union. The money is actually stolen from some other New Zealander’s bank account.

In either of these cases there’s a good chance I’ll either lose some money, or I’ll be party to someone else losing money. It’s just a new twist on those old job scam emails.

Millton

2009-05-23T08:56:54Z

The last time we returned from the Eastern Bay of Plenty we stopped on the way. As you do.

We fetched up at Millton Vineyards, missing any signage that might have dissuaded us. It was just over two years ago, and it was, as we found out later, the middle of harvest.

Eventually someone came out to the cellar door. He apologised for the wait, saying he’d been busy (oops, we thought), and introduced himself as James Millton (double oops). We thought he’d send us away, and who could blame him.

Instead he sat us down, drawing a couple of tasting glasses of freshly pressed grape juice for the girls, and ran us through his range. That kind of personal approach works well for us. We ended up buying several bottles of special occasion stuff, the Chenin Blanc in particular standing out.

We’d long finished our purchases from that day, or so I’d thought. Recently though we’ve cleared out the spare room for Bella – part of the recent renovation work – and our last box of wine was among the final stack of relocated stuff in the living room waiting for a new home.

And in there was this bottle of Clos de Ste. Anne Millton 2005 The Crucible Syrah. Which of course we could find a new home for. Once we’d finished saying the name. We’ve been rehoming it this evening, warming and decanting it before pouring, and soon (I can’t wait!) we’ll provide a similar service for its smaller brother, the Essencia Chardonnay.

The syrah is perfectly balanced; peppery, as you’d expect, but full and smooth. My vocabulary is defeated. It was fucking good. And a nice birthday treat for me.

Recommended. And so is Millton.

back

2009-05-16T08:39:37Z

So for the last 25 days we’ve been away from home: first at Masterton, then later at Rebecca’s sister’s place in Hataitai.

All this while the bedrooms in the house were being insulated and re-lined; the floors sanded, and then, unexpectedly, the bathroom redone.

We’re home now; the place is liveable, but there’s still a lot to do.

It’s at these times one wishes for Barbara Eden to wave her fingers and just fix it all up, but that’s not how things work. Unfortunately. (Or fortunately – that whole premise was a bit dodgy…)

mantis ootheca

2009-04-25T09:17:42Z

That’s the word of the day. Ootheca.

After we got back from lunch I happened to be flicking the fallen leaves out of the car’s gutters when I saw a praying mantis down in the gutter between the back window and the boot lid.

It turned out to be a female creating (what is the right word here?) her ootheca. (It seems to be the time of the year for it – here’s a recent Wellington one, and my one of a few years back too.)

I got Rebecca, the kids and their grandparents out and we crowded around for a closer look.

She was extruding a foamy meringue-like substance that actually looked rather tasty (I’m ~~salivating~~ thinking about brandy-snaps right about now):

The whole process took about an hour, and afterwards I got her to model for a photo before releasing her to the sanctuary of a nearby walnut tree.

Meanwhile, we now have an awful responsibility. What are we going to do with the ootheca? It will eventually pop off the flexible rubber seal that it’s been laid on, and will be washed away by the action of air or water. I can’t bear the thought of all those lovely mantis babies being lost.

I guess we’ll just have to peel it away tomorrow, once it hardens, and keep it safely in a jar until hatching time. Could be interesting.

autumn in the park

2009-04-25T08:46:00Z

Just as this time last year we’ve been wandering about in Masterton’s Queen Elizabeth Park.

We started, as always, with lunch at Café Cecille. It is under new management, and was a little more focussed and sharper on their game than in some of our previous visits. They do the usual café fare, but classily done, and I’d recommend the place. Especially if you’ve worked up a bit of an appetite wandering about the park.

And it the park is just beautiful in there at the moment.

The kids walked back with their grandparents, and Rebecca and I lingered, taking photos. We nearly filled up the memory card.

One last image to hold:

Idyllic. Pity we have to return to Wellington tomorrow.