The Robot's Thoughts

I backed up my entire music and iTunes TV show collection (features 2 seasons of Battlestar Galactica and a few months worth of Daily Show and Colbert Report) on to my Dreamhost account. 38GBs of music and TV took nearly a whole week with my connection.

I think its time for me to upgrade to the super fast connection.

Labels: dreamhost, music, personal

The author of the blog Furious Seasons, a former professional journalist, decided to rant about this whole "web 2.0" thingie.

The hilarious part is that the buzzword "web 2.0" was made up by, get this, a print publisher. Not by geeks. He then went on to asset that online news -- mainly bloggers performing citizen journalism -- were a bad thing. They must be -- because they're gutting print media. Just like google is gutting classified advertising, the mainstay of print journalism. He then tells the "web 2.0" geeks that they have no balls, and no soul.

Being an engineer and a web developer, I thought I'd respond. Here is the comment I posted. I have a feeling it won't get past his moderation. It seems he's worried about catching quite a few flames.

I wonder why?

Update: He has posted more comments, and mine made it through his moderation filter.

Hahahahaha. Right. Google is bad because effective search with minimal advertising (yes, *minimal* -- and very easy to block with almost no knowledge, if that's how you roll) made the net usable.

You're a journalist. Stop and self-examine yourself. What is it a journalist does that a regular person with a blog doesn't do? Nothing. Blogging -- citizen journalists have already surpassed mainstream media (MSM) in content.

Let's see, thanks to your profession, we let this administration get away with calling anti-war activists 'un-American'. We had out-spoken politicians that raised serious, legitimate doubts about the war silence. We had the manipulated intelligence scandal AFTER finding there were no WMDs. Great timely reporting there, thanks MSM.

We had a CIA operative outed -- once again, thanks your government shilling. Speaking of PROFRESSIONAL journalism doing a better job than citizen journalists, where was the fact-checking on "They will greet us a liberators"?

Why is it the editors of the NYT stood alone in referring to GWB as "Mr. Bush" and not "President Bush"? Why will the editors of major publications run Op-Eds slamming the presidents, but won't go on the record for or against impeachment?

Your profession was kindly referred to as the "4th estate". You had a responsibility in keeping the citizen informed on the important events or not -- regardless of the citizen's apathy. Your profession pissed it all away for full-color sports pages and Dear Abby. Throw in a couple of press releases ("New gizmo reduces pollution in coal plants, so we at Coal International want you to know that coal isn't bad for the environment.") passed off as News and a bunch of crappy ads and you've got a modern newspaper.

There's nothing really modern about it. *Gasp*.

You're still trying to tell me how fabulous the emperor's new clothes are, over all the laughter coming from the citizen journalists at the blog party.

A journalist talking to an engineer about balls and soul is like a nun trying to give sex advice to a porn star. Seriously, what kind of drugs are you ON?

Here's an informative story you can run by your editor: The CEO of American Bridge, in 2004, while speaking at the University of Pittsburgh, stated "The liberal arts degree of the 21st century will be engineering and science." What he means to say is something soft on science/engineering will basically relegate to you an overpaid high school graduate. If you want to do anything meaningful, go to law school, enter politics, run a business, get a real job, you will need an engineering/science degree. Don't believe me? Ask the 400,000 Chinese engineers that graduate every year, as they steamroll past our soon-to-be declining economy.

Labels: ramblings, Reddit, thoughts, web 2.0

This article lists some interesting facts.

Among the highlights:

8. The U.S. government has paid about $1.5 billion in benefits to thousands of sick nuclear-weapons workers since 2001.
(I wonder when we'll get my uncle's check.)

14. An impact crater 18 miles in diameter was found 12,500 feet under the Indian Ocean.

22. The hole in the earth's ozone layer is closing - and could be entirely closed by 2050. Meanwhile, the amount of greenhouse gases is increasing.
(And I'm 100% confident our science-friendly government will get everyone to band together and solve this problem, just like we did with the Ozone layer....)

25. Women gain weight when they move in with a boyfriend because their diet deteriorates, but men begin to eat more healthy food when they set up a home with a female partner.
(so let me get this straight, even as a guy begins to take diet seriously, what he eats is still worse for his partner than if she were living single? Are all these single women crysterbeating?)

28. Around the world, middle-aged and elderly men tend to be more satisfied with their sex lives than women in the same age group, a new survey shows.
(maybe they're seeing the world through blue-pill colored glasses?)

32. Just 30 minutes of continuous kissing can diminish the body's allergic reaction to pollen, relaxing the body and reducing production of histamine, a chemical cell given out in response to allergens.
(it doesn't say where they're kissing...)

39. The common pigeon can memorize 1,200 pictures.
(and I can't remember where I stashed my keys!!!!)

43. Sleeping in on Saturday and Sunday can disturb your body clock, leaving you fatigued at the start of the week.
(we DIDN'T know this in 2005? Seriously? Oh, yeah, maybe its because too many scientists are going to bed early on their friday and saturday nights.)

45. During the past five years, the existence of a peanut allergy in children has doubled.
(this makes trail mix all the more tempting to give out on halloween.)

46. Photos taken of Mars in 1999 and 2005 show muddy sand, indicating there may have been a flood sometime between those years.
(Mars has spring break...now mars just needs women.)

47. A python was the first god worshipped by mankind, according to 70,000-year-old evidence found in a cave in Botswana's Tosodilo hills.
(As Richard Dawkins would say, "More evidence that religion was a bad joke since day 1.")

49. One of the most effective ways for athletes to recover after exercise is to drink a glass of chocolate milk.
(Now I'll never get my SO to cut back on her chocolate milk intake.)

50. Researchers from the University of Manchester managed to induce teeth growth in normal chickens - activating genes that have lain dormant for 80 million years.
(I, for one, welcome our new chicken overloads.)

Labels: 2006, lists, me trying to be funny, Reddit, science

Merry Christmas! Happy Holidays!
Can you believe that both my mom and my girlfriend's mom got me ultra-hot hot sauce for Christmas gifts?

http://movies.yahoo.com/feature/transformers_hd.html


Go there. Watch the new teaser trailer of the upcoming TransFormers movie in HD.
QuickTime 7 or any H.264 codec required.

Its so awesome

Labels: HD, movies, quicktime, Transformers

Prepare yourself for yet another stream of incoherent ramblings.

1. A friend of mine recently confessed to me a rather hilarious story. He and his girlfriend visited the low-rent strip club outside of our sleepy town of fairmont aptly nicknamed 'Dirty Vegas'. DV is known for its scantily clad women, and for the fact that it has an open touching policy. For a mere $2 *yes, I find it funny that its $2* the comely lass will provide you a dollop of moisturizer, and pretend to like it when you rub it on her T or A. And for $3, you can receive a mini-lapdance on stage, in front of all the other shady patrons.

My friend and protagonist of the story, in his infinite wisdom, decided to buy one of these mini lapdances for his girlfriend. I have known this couple (who will remain nameless) for as long as they've been together, and I can't think of a more straight laced women. I imagine convincing her of such an adventure must've required begging or blackmail, but I wasn't blunt enough to ask.

Let it be known that strippers apparently take more liberties with their female customers, and for this customer, it was apparently to far when her shirt was pulled up and *gasp*, like Janet Jackson, a nipple was exposed for all onlooking customers.

My friend confessed to me because we're cut from the same cloth. We admire the same kind of character. Call it seasoned. Call it street smart. Call it battle scared. We admire people who can make mistakes and learn to laugh about it. Call it a life experience and consider it water under the bridge.

I have another old friend who lived like this. She and I go way back to freshmen year. We grew distant, but through it all, because of this ability to laugh off mistakes, a trait we shared, we always gave ourselves away in conversations to one another. Like I time I could hear the regret she felt for liking a friend of mine. Deep down, she knew that despite having a physique that left her moist, his demeanor was that of an asshole, and it wouldn't change now matter how bad she wanted it to. And she had better fish to try.

Through the whole experience, and the name calling for all sides, I can respect the mistake making process. After all, the only thing worse than being talked about is NOT being talked about.

The light in our eyes and the smile on our lips that comes from enjoying life. Whether enjoying life comes in the form of making out to radiohead, writing a screenplay, a finely composed sonnet, or Miss USA making out with Miss Teen USA, in the end the defining moment of the experience is not what you accomplished or what people think you've accomplished, but how you feel about it. And if that's true, you should choose to feel good about everything you do. Regret is not really the virtue its paraded out to be, but more a failing of the short sighted. Maybe that's a bold statement, but everything counts towards something. Can it really be a mistake if you choose to make it?

2. Confidence. I feel there are two types of confidence. There is internal confidence, which comes from the conviction that you can do it. This is just something you feel inside you, and its hard to shake. Then there is external confidence, which is confidence you get from other people believing in you. This is something that's built up by clapping parents cheering for you at track meets, or attending the fall play to see how badly you butcher lysander's lines.

For myself, I've always barrowed off the character I inherited in a ShadowRun campaign. His mentality was, "You're only as good as your last job." This lead me to take praise from others with a severe grain of salt. I guess I learned early on to value the opinions of others only lightly. I think, looking back at this, its because I was incredibly goal focused as a kid, and was always planning on leaving my small town, intending on doing great things. It tends to make a lot of things in life fade away into the background chatter of your continue progress to "the future" where things, you tell yourself, will magically "get better". I even remember doubting in my mind the veracity of my first love's words when she said, "You are beautiful".

In hindsight, this attitude is almost contemptible. Think about it: You're essentially accepting that your immediate surrounds aren't perfect and aren't making you happy, but rather than strive to change it for the better, you're prepared to wait things out. Granted, for young people, as I was, this is simply the most realistic option. But a family is nothing but a collection of people. If there is something that needs to be changed, it has to start from within you, and inspire others.

The confidence I had was mostly internal. I had made up my mind what I was going to do. I knew what fascinated me and kept me occupied. Even when things appeared difficult, I was essentially unflappable. I would adapt; I would learn, I would overcome. Whatever it takes was just a way of life. I know that last sentence will resonate with some of our engineering graduates.

I have often wondered how to better create confidence in the people around me. I've often failed. This whole post could somehow be considered a rationalization, but don't stop now: hear me out. I feel my failure is a result of either trying to create external confidence -- which cannot come from a sole source, but from a support network, and is something I've grown up inherently devaluing. I also feel I fail at creating internal confidence because I created my own so long ago, and its just carried me with its own momentum. Even some of my more stunning failures have not stripped me of the confidence (with some exceptions. Ask one of my good friends about the dinner I took her out to our freshmen year, where we didn't speak at all during the main course.)

Still, the power of confidence is life transforming, and I wish I could inspire more people to live with a certainty of purpose. Don't let the purpose define you, merely, let it give you direction. You cannot be afraid to take risks and live your life. Its far to short as it is to worry if you're going to make mistakes.

Labels: confidence, insomnia, late night, life is short, ramblings, thoughts

This is an interesting article I found via the mother of all news sites, Reddit.com

Read it to hear an accurate description of what happens to your body when you drink a coke or pepsi.

Labels: Harmful effects of Soda, Health, Reddit

Sys-Con.com's article on their java center deals with predictions for the IT world in 2007. They've asked several java and web experts to predict what are going to be the trends of 2007. I thought I'd go through some of the more interesting ones and provide what would pass for my insight.

1. Incremental mainstream adoption of Ruby on Rails.

This is going to happen. It may not be Ruby on Rails. It may be Python and Django. It won't achive majority in 2007, but it will start to be recognized as the next thing. It will no longer be viewed as ".Net vs. J2EE". It will now be viewed as "J2EE or .NET vs. RoR/Django/Turbogears/etc".

2. A slowdown in the AJAX hype

.
I don't think this is going to happen in the slightest. The tech culture is filled with hype. And really, AJAX is just beginning to take off. AJAX frameworks are still struggling to adapt to things like mobile applications, for use on people's cell phones. The newer browsers, IE7, and the upcoming Firefox 3.0, are going to allow AJAX to continue to shine, and shine brightly. Tools are going to further incorporare AJAX, and it will increasingly become part of a user's web experience, for better or for worse. We will no doubt see the same kind of errors made in DHTML, back around the turn of the decade. (You know, when HTML and Javascript was called DHTML, not "AJAX").

3. Apple will continue to trounce everyone else for the preferred geek platform. The stigma of being a Web programmer still using Windows will increase.

This quote came from DAVID HEINEMEIER HANSSON, the creator of the Rails web app framework. As much as I love macs, I'm labeling this one "arrogant mac user bullshit." Large companies will continue to use windows for web development, and there is hardly a case where enough programmers could justify the cost of switching over to their bosses in such a way that it would fly. Since they don't have the power to change it, they will simply accept it. While the majority of us don't have jobs where we work on cool projects like basecamp and drink expensive coffee with our mac book pros (as I type this on my mac tower, drinking coffee) we also account for a significant amount of the IT infrastructed developed and maintained every year.

Still, its nice that for once, many of my co-workers feel the need to save up and purchase a mac book pro. I'm glad I no longer have to mention "Mac User" in the same quiet, unobtrusive voice I would use to say "grew up around the amish in central pa."

4. IE 7 will have a fast adoption curve and so Firefox will cease gaining market share.

I simply disagree. Corporations have put a lot of web front ends out there, which are tweaked to work it IE6 and Firefox. A lot of them have to go through compatibility testing before they do large scale rollouts for IE7. I know mine advises us NOT to use it just yet for things like PeopleSoft.

I also think people forget that there are probably more pirated copies of windows xp out there than legitimate. The majority of companies probably hold the legit licenses. The botnets that are responsible for flooding my inbox with spam are likely running some unpatched pirated variant that won't verify as genuine to get IE7. Firefox will continue to provide a modern web browsing experience for the individuals that use those machines.

5. Apple will no longer gain market share for its desktops and will stabilize at its current meaningless level.

I strongly disagree. Apple's hardware is the evermore spoken of as geeky envy hardware. Want to run unix programs, mac os x programs, and windows program all at the same time? OS X is really your only option for the trifecta. Apple's get a mac campaign is finally starting to resonate with more and more people. Apple is braching out its corporate purchase plans, making it feasible to run Mac at home and leave windows at the office. Apple also appeals to the boastful family man: Want to share home movies and family photos with relatives, with no hassle? Apple has a solution with its iLife and .Mac software. Now you can photocast the pictures of little Billy's first karate tournament to co-workers and family alike. And no virii, spyware, and a one-click activation for your firewall? Toss in the bonus of how awesome iChat's video conference capabilities are, and you find one very attractive package that "just works" for the non-techie and a user experience windows currently cannot compete with.

6. The rise of the Semantic Web

This has been predicted every year since someone coined the phrase and invented RDF. This year doesn't look to be any different. Next, please.

7. The success of AJAX drives traditional software back to the drawing boards.

Again, an overstatement. What's the difference between Google Docs and Microsoft Office 2004 for OS X? If my internet connection goes down, I can keep working on my "Great American Novel" and none of my work is lost. Traditional software will still have its place. AJAX makes client-server a lot more attractive, but I don't expect AJAX to deliver a Photoshop CS3 killer anytime soon.

8. New Crop of AJAX Productivity Applications

Yeah, that's a given.

9. Microsoft Vista Launch Will Boost Sales of Other OSes

This is also true. Windows will become the game OS. You will only want Vista for DirectX 10.0. If my girlfriend doesn't want to get a mac, I'll probably help her transition to Ubuntu Linux. OS X and Linux serve an end user's need just as well as windows. Yes, you're trading one set of headaches (spyware) for another (driver support). But one is a mere one-time set up hassle (finding and configuring drivers for any unsupported out of the box hardware), while the other is an ongoing, never ending assault.



Please note that I have previously published a guest column on Sys-Com.com on my "sister blog", The Robot's Soapbox which informed college students that their life ambition after graduating college should be to avoid workplaces that force their employees to work in cubicles. This generated some controversy.

Labels: 2007 Predictions, AJAX, Mac OS X, Sys-Con.com, Web Development

http://macheist.com/ is a website with a mission. That mission is to sell you a $288.00 bundle of popular macintosh shareware applications for only $49.

But that's not all.

25% of the purchase total is donated to charity. If $50,000 dollars is raised for charity, they toss in a bonus application, Newsfire. If $100,000 is raised for charity, they'll throw in the popular "All the Ruby On Rails Geeks Use it and it won an Apple Design Award" text editor, TextMate.

If you have a mac, this is the deal for you. I've already got in on this, and would highly recommend it to any other mac user in need of some apps.

Labels: Charity, Shareware

I _KNEW_ calling blogger nasty names would allow me to migrate.

Haha, fooled them.

So I logged into blogger today and it told me that today was my lucky day. The long, long, long ass wait for the new "beta" version of blogger is over. I can upgrade my blogs today. It would be better control of my layout, more options for font choices, etc, etc, etc. The new blogger, as evidences by this beta site is slick and nifty. I've been looking forward to it.

So I sat on my hands for a few hours playing video games. When I come back to my machine and click the "migrate now" button on my blogger dashboard, I get a "Oh, sorry, we're only migrating so many blogs, blah blah blah, we're doing this in stages. You're stuck with the simplistic, not-so-cool blogger."

Blogger! Listen to me: You're a cocktease. And nobody likes a cocktease.

I had lunch with some co-workers and realized I'm a terrible person to relate. Its one of those revealing things when it dawns on you that you're not the mackdaddy (i went there) of small talk.

Now that college football season is over, I don't know what to talk about with people at work.

I don't want to talk politics. Talking politics, 90% of the time, could breed disagreement between otherwise agreeable co-workers. Does it matter if I think socialized medicine is a crock, or that it could be the one thing to save America's sagging health system? Either way, no. But someone who vehemently disagrees will now consider my political views 'idiotic'. Its possible that, from there, they would start to undermine my technical authority and just make work difficult.

Trust me. I've seen it happen.

I don't want to talk religion. I'm not comfortable discussing it with most of the people I hang out with, much less people I "just work with". See above.

I don't want to be that guy you take to lunch that ends up just talking about work during lunch. I think that's quite possibly the fastest way to NEVER get invited again, ever.

I'd love to talk movies, but a lot of people I know are staying in and renting what they like on Netflix. I'm hitting up new movies that I want to see, and using Netflix to fill me in on television I haven't seen.

I'd love to talk video games, but odds are, everyone already knows what I have to say about video games if they're into it. Now that sega is gone, I'm a nintendo fanboy. I might pick up a PS2 JUST to get guitar hero 1 and 2, so that me and my SO can rock out in our living room. And I might get FFXII. Might. I'm more interested in the Final Fantasy 3 release for the DS. But before I buy a new game, I have to beat Dragon Quest: Rocketslime.

I'd love to talk cars, but again, you can tell me about a truck that has gotten pimped out to have some crazy amount of ft.-torque and I'll just blink. I like tweaking sport sedans, which is pretty lame, even for tuners.

I think I just need to take the plunge and start watching more hockey games. Watching toothless men twice my size beat the piss out of each other on ice is something that is both work safe and entertaining -- we can all agree on it.

My uncle passed away in his sleep last night.
So much for mindblowing "lunch time thoughts".

Quick snapshot of events in my life:

Friends had said that I've started to 'get fat'. I've lost 8lbs. since returning from the bender that was thanksgiving. I was a glutton...for gin and tonics. I'm eating right, cutting out red meat almost entirely, and re-doubling my efforts at the gym.

My SO has started her new job as a fulltime mental health specialist. This include a sizable raise, benefits, and more importantly better hours which enables us to spend more time together and get more sleep. I've made it into the office an hour early every day this week.

$957 million in 5 months. I'd really, really love to tell you what that means, but I don't feel this is the place to brag about it. Its not what you think, I won't be getting rich. Let's just say its positive reinforcement that coming here to WV was a chance to do something real.

I'm getting daily emails from my mother at her workplace giving me a status update on my uncle, who's in hospice care. It won't be long now. I took my father's advice last visit home and began preparing myself for the eventuality. That's all I have to say about the matter right now.

I'm writing a series of short articles for my "essay blog", The Robot's Soapbox. None of them are ready for primetime yet, but when they are, you'll hear about it here first. I think this time I'm going to be the one who submits the articles so sites like Reddit.com and Slashdot.org.

My friend Mario was recently laid off from his job, and instead of taking it personally, he's gone on some kind of wild adventure. He's been in Pittsburgh, NYC, Philadelphia, and now he's camping out in MD right now. He's got some kind of job in Pittsburgh or philly, I can't remember which. He gets back this thursday night, we'll have a send off party this friday night, and saturday he packs up and leaves. Just like that. I am going to miss him. He's one of the friends out here that helped me get settled. I could always count on him to go out on town with me.

After being around for 7 years, and having a lot churn in membership, the soapbox mailing list seems to have actually taken off. Its reached some kind of critical mass where people actually make a point to check their personal email everyday during work to take part of the discussions. There seems to be at least one good thread everyday.
The success is not really mine to claim, others are doing most of the work, but it is mine to bask in. I probably need to email people off the list. Between family and soapbox, the other sizeable category of email I get is from spammers.

Oh, my SO is also getting a christmas/holiday bonus. I won't disclose how much it is, but its more than enough to get a Wii. For the sake of being selfless, I planned on picking up one AFTER the holiday season, but who knows, I might be playing the new Zelda this Christmas morning.

This should be a good enough morning update for everyone to read while they drink their coffee. I will hopefully have something more for you come lunch. I plan on ripping off Brian Dylan, and having a "Lunchtime thoughts" session.

A science teacher decided to see how much he could cut his energy bills, and found out that through a few simple steps, he could cut his energy costs by 2/3rds.

He cut his bills so much, he ended up getting an audit by his energy company.

How'd he do it? Its all the simple do it yourself stuff that we ALL could do. The first is that he went out and replaced his kitchen appliances with the latest and greatest with energy star appliances. Basically, if you have a fridge that is 10 years old or older, it needs to go. He replaced all this incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs (the swirls). He made sure all his home entertainment equipment was placed on surge protectors. Doing that cuts down on 'phantom load', the power drawn by devices even when off.

He also replaced windows with ones that have a higher heat resistance and better caulking. All these little, affordable home improvements which easily pay for themselves over time.

Here's the whole article for you to read.

I got the urge to be productive on a weekend, so instead of really doing anything productive, I simply changed my blogger.com template.

The template's content area is W I D E R, which should make it easier for people to read my site when my posts get long-winded, as they often do.

I've also updated my side links and what not.

I'd love some constructive feedback in my comments.