Sun, 16 May 2010

Personal Contact

I was using the self-checkout at the market today when I was struck by the extent to which technology is isolating us from personal contact. Even simple things like interacting with the teller is reduced. Have you been to a coffee shop lately? If you don't just rush in and out or even drive through, you see people, often sitting at the same table with their cell phones or laptops out texting to people who aren't at the shop. I have been in a coffee shop in the afternoon which was quieter than a library -- everyone on their laptops in their own little worlds -- the sound of conversation nonexistent. When we walk, we have on our MP3 players, isolating us from even the sounds of the real world.

My wife has proposed that everone should be unplugged for at least half and hour each day. Sort of a luddite period when there is no cell phone, no MP3 player, no laptop, no communication except with any real person within speaking distance of you. Even if you are alone, you can unplug and just listen to the sounds of real things around you. Take a walk and just walk. Don't text while listening to your iPod at highest volume. Go to a coffee shop with a friend and actually just talk to that friend rather than texting to another friend not physically present. Sit quietly and read a book or talk with your family without the media center blaring in the background. I think it's a great idea.

OK, there are times when I want to listen to a podcast while walking or hear that album while reading, but there should be a period each day when we just exist within the realm of our senses and the people and nature around us. When we are open to interaction with people, when we are disconnected from technology.

It's probably a bit ironic that I'm sitting alone at my laptop typing the blog and posting it onto the Internet, but, hey, I have to get your attention somehow. You can disconnect after reading this and take your luddite break for the day.

posted 13:55 [/Technology] permanent link

Sat, 03 Apr 2010

Gadget Sites = Apple P.R.

Today, the iPad is released. For months, any site involving gadgets has been an Apple P.R. extension. Today, they become the advertising arm for Apple. It will be iPad this and iPad that and iPad the other thing. For those of us who can't afford one or who really don't see the use for one, it's a drag. But then most of these sites exist because of the constant stream of material from the gadget manufacturers and this is just another example. Perhaps it's a little extreme, but Apple is good at marketing their elegant devices. After all, it's big business 300,000 units at $600/unit, plus all the apps. Almost equals a day of the war in Afghanistan and Iraq. But, seriously, it's a big thing and a continuing income stream for Apple, and, oh yeah, the gadget sites that we visit to learn about these things.

posted 08:51 [/Technology] permanent link

Sun, 28 Mar 2010

Notes in the Ether . . .

I am in love with Microsoft OneNote (yes, I know, a Microsoft product!). They really got it right. I have a USB that I take with me to various machines with multiple applications on it and I'm looking for something -- preferably open source -- to use like OneNote. So far everything has fallen short.

I'm reticent about using online solutions and storing my thoughts in the ether. There are a couple of reasons:

1. I don't want someone else storing my private thoughts.
   I may be a bit paranoid, but then people may really be following me
2. I don't always have access to the Internet where I work and I'd like a local solution
3. I can't affort an iPhone or other device. I do have a netbook, but I don't always carry that and I'd like something that works from the USB stick on any Windows computer.

I think my biggest deterent to using some internet-based solutions is the feeling that I don't want to send my thoughts into the world for storage until I'm actually ready to publish them. It's a matter of trust, I suppose -- I don't especially. It's interesting, because I trust someone else to contain my mail, I bank online, I have a website. In short, much of my life is already online.

Until I change my mind about online services, I suppose I'll just have to continue to happily use OneNote and continue my search.

posted 08:12 [/Technology] permanent link

Wed, 24 Mar 2010

Frustrated Gadget Fan . . .

. . . a lament.

I like gadgets. I can't afford to buy any of them, but I like to look at them, at least. I look at Engadget and Gizmodo periodically and have noticed that there are a lot of gadgets that never see the light of day there. Here is one of the most idiotic headlines I have seen recently

Nokia N8 being announced in April

Not announced, mind you, but "bring announced". What sort of "buzz" are they attempting to generate with this type of story? Hey, here's something that may or may not make it to market which may or may not be announced in April (it's now March) says someone who knows a reputable person who thought they heard it from someone who came across an e-mail forwarded from someone who might not be psychotic. . . well you get the picture.

Isn't it bad enough that I can't affort the things which are on the market or are announced to possibly be on the market? Now I have to feel inadequate about something which is rumored to be announced to be on the market -- which I can't afford either.

Sigh . . .

posted 13:00 [/Technology] permanent link

Sun, 13 Dec 2009

Programming Examples, why is it?

Why is it that programmers do documentation, but when they have an example page, they do fancier things which don't match their documentation? OK, I know you get the Hello World program as a matter of course, but this is generally useless for anything beyond "Hello World". It seems, however, that programmers, if they create a sample page, for example, don't follow their own examples or make it so fancy that you have to spend hours trying to figure out how they deviated from their instructions so you can duplicate it in your own environment? It's like "C" or perl coders who think it's neat to pack as much into a single line of code as possible. Sure, it's elegant, but it's also not understandable nor maintainable.

posted 09:28 [/Technology] permanent link

Fri, 27 Nov 2009

Audio Books?

Why are audio books priced like hard cover books -- $20.00 and up -- rather than more like paper back books -- around $5-10 dollars? Alright, they have to pay the talent, but the production costs and distribution costs are less. I know, personally, that I don't buy audio books for that reason. If they are more like paperbacks, I probably would. A lost customer.

posted 10:03 [/Technology] permanent link

Sun, 25 Oct 2009

DST Ends

Here in the U.S. Daylight Savings Time (DST) ends next week. I'm on call, so I'm intimately familiar with this event. Hopefully, the systems I am responsible for will weather the change without incident. We spoke with relatives in Spain today which has already gone through the change -- today, to be exact. We had forgotten about that and got up an hour earlier than we needed to for the call. Oh well, live and learn.

Our systems deal in local time and, thus, we have to worry about the long day caused by the extra hour at 3:00 AM. Because we deal with hourly markets, we need to store the 25th hour of information and deal with it in all our systems. It can be quite a mess if we get it wrong and our teams have been testing for some time. I think we're ready and we are minimizing the number of changes this week to assure that everything goes smoothly.

Time -- 24 hours, 60 minutes, 60 seconds -- and dates -- Days, weeks, months -- has always been a bit of a bugger for computer systems which must deal with it. And daylight savings time only adds to the interest. For example, if you deal in data which must be stored and tracked, you have to figure out a way to deal with the fact that you have one day each year with 23 hours -- the short day -- and one day with 25 hours -- the long day. To make things even more interesting, if you store historical data, you must compensate for the fact that this day was different a number of years ago! And, of course, here in the States, there are a number of places which don't go on daylights savings time. Don't get me started about Arizona!

posted 18:18 [/Technology] permanent link

Thu, 15 Oct 2009

Thinking Big . . .

The next generation of computer scientists has to think in terms of what could be described as Internet scale. Facebook, for example, uses more than 1 petabyte of storage space to manage its users’ 40 billion photos. (A petabyte is about 1,000 times as large as a terabyte, and could store about 500 billion pages of text.) [source]

When I read this in an article, I was struck by the though that the laptop at which I'm working is a gateway to more data than has been available to anyone at one point throughout history. It seems to me that the problem in the past has been formulating meaningful ideas with too little data. The problem is rapidly becoming turning too much data into meaningful information from which significant ideas can spring.

posted 08:37 [/Technology] permanent link

Thu, 08 Oct 2009

Upgrading a Workstation

When you are assigned a workstation at your "real job", you start working on it. After years, you find that you need to upgrade to a new workstation and the adventure begins. I am going through this now . . .

It's interesting the amount of stuff and you accumulate in the years of using a workstation. You install tools, create scripts, workout methods of doing things and then . . . you need to upgrade. WOW!

Now, you need to make sure that things are migrated from you workstation. But, of course, things change, programs upgrade, drivers change, technology advances and it's not Kansas any more, Dorothy . . .

Simple things like all those configuration changes you made . . . that little macro you wrote . . . those favorites you accumulated.

Oh and by the way, ff you're working in a corporate environment, security issues, standards, even entire programs and operating systems may be involved. In my case, this isn't an issue, except for some minor security policies, but, the migration effort from one laptop to another is still a major undertaking.

I have noticed that you tend to get comfortable with your current environment, even, if, like mine, it's really too slow to be very productive. Because you have configured it over a long time, you tend to forget what you have done. Now, you come to the new workstation and, hey! where's my script! or "sheesh, I forgot about that tweek." As you work, you find things that you use frequently but which non-standard and implemented by you, often years ago.

The upgrade is a chance, however, to clean things up. It gives you an excuse to take all the accumulated stuff and remove it from the system. One of the things that was pointed out to me is that my profile has over 400 megabytes of application data. That's all the stuff that's associated with the applications you use (or don't use, since you have removed them from your workstation or just don't use them). These accumulated files and entries can slow your system, especially at boot up.

So what have I learned. Here are a few things:

1. If you're on a corporate network, keep data files on your shared drive.
   We have a directory assigned to each of us on the corporate LAN, the nice thing about it is that it's backed up regularly. It's also nice not to have to copy all the material to the shared drive just to move it onto the new computer.
2. Remember and backup configurations and macros.
   When you move or upgrade your system, you can retrieve them.
3. Backup things like site configurations and other material that you might need.
4. Record things other places.
   I have started keeping a USB drive that I can move important or personal things onto.

Things are straightening out. I'm sure months from now, I'll find something that I have missed, but, by then it's way too late, so I'll live with it . . .

posted 18:28 [/Technology] permanent link

Thu, 01 Oct 2009

Internet Learning

This week, I'm sitting at home taking a long-distance class over the Internet. I'm not in my pajamas, but I could be. The class is taught by an instructor and, like the people at the actual sites, I have to be in my seat for a specified period of time. But, when you stop to think about it, the technology is pretty amazing.

First, I'm on a laptop in my home which isn't connected to anything at least not with wires -- WiFi is providing the networking in the house. My home is connected to the Internet via fiber optics which provide a decent bandwidth for this effort. I suspect if your connection isn't all that fast, your experience could vary.

I'm connected into my office to work some on breaks and things. I can access all the functions on my work PC through Citrix technology. This keeps me connected to work in case they just can't get along without me. It also gives me access to all the tools on my work PC without taking up the memory of my home PC, which is running the class. (Don't worry, I'm not working while in class. I'm really concentrating on the class as it's important to what I do for a living.)

I'm listening to the class over my work cell phone. It's a long phone call, but the class does not provide voice over the computer. The instructor has a conference phone on the desk at the front. Having the earphones in my ears for 7 or so hours each day is a bit tiring, but the sound quality is great this way. I know I could use the speaker phone on my cell, but my family is here during the day and they really don't want to learn this stuff! I believe that the phone quality is definitely better than that over the computer. Although, over the weekend, we had a Skype session with Spain and the sound quality was great. As with anything, your mileage will vary. But, in general, the phone is probably more consistent than the computer sound.

Jumping in to ask questions is a bit less convenient than being in the room with the instructor. There are both people in the room with the instructor, people at remote sites and me at home. The people in the room are naturally, interacting with the instructor more freely than those of us at remote sites. They need to work on the interaction some, but, generally, it's acceptable and a definite advantage to be here at home and not have to travel, stay at hotels, eat at restaurants, etc. Also cheaper for the company that I work for, even though the cost of the class itself isn't discounted for remote students. The most costly part of my participation is probably the call and that's primarily because the training company uses a local phone number rather than a toll-free number.

The instructor's PowerPoint -- yes, it's a Microsoft class, so PowerPoint is appropriate -- is displayed via Microsoft Net Meeting. This gives very good quality to the remote user as long as the presenter uses the PC's mouse to indicate what they're talking about rather than pointing at the screen in the classroom or uses a laser pointer. We had some problems when he first started out because of the size of his screen, but, after adjusting that, it's actually easier than trying to see the presentation on a screen. I have also been successful getting screen prints and annotating them in One Note for future reference.

The Labs are done via MyPC connection to a workstation sitting in the classroom. The remote user's PC's are turned toward the instructor so he can assist with Labs. Pretty fancy and works well, except it's a bit small on my PC. The remote PC also has a webcam image of the instructor and the front of the room so you can see his smiling face. I like to put the Net Meeting page up and the myPC page in the little "preview box" in Vista. It actually shows the instructor running around the room and makes things more intimate.

I'm running Microsoft One Note on my PC to take notes about the class. This allows me to capture screens and put notes on the page with arrows and circles and a paragraph on the back . . . oops! wrong song. But, you get the idea.

But, it's amazing. Here I am, almost in my pajamas, taking a class with people in several other sites and just taking the technology for granted. (I won't even mention the amazement of Skype to relatives overseas!)

posted 16:32 [/Technology] permanent link