Disorderly Content

Talking Points Memo links to a rant at Media Matters that puts the lie to the idea of a Liberal bias in the media. He reminds us of all the time, energy and money spent on Whitewater, the First Family scandal that never was a scandal, and how little of any of those things is spent on Conservative activity that really is scandalous. Worth a read.

So I've just arrived at my hotel after a long day of driving. Through snow, if you can believe it; don't these people know it's the end of May? Anyway, I get to my room and plug in my laptop. The work one. The Dell. And moments after getting an Internet connection that little word bubble pops up to tell me there's an update to install. Now normally I'm a trusting soul and would just let it do its thing. But I was curious. So I selected Custom Install to see just what Microsoft was updating. And I discover it's something called (and I'm not making this up) the Windows Genuine Advantage Notification. Even better, here's the description:

The Windows Genuine Advantage Notification tool notifies you if your copy of Windows is not genuine. (Well, duh!) If your system is found to be a non-genuine (sic), the tool will help you obtain a licensed copy of Windows.

And why exactly would I want to install this piece of finkware on my (okay, my employer's) laptop? What benefit is there to anybody other than Microsoft?

Gotta admit, I needed a laugh right about now. Thanks, guys.

A few weeks ago I started to read a screed against Professor Lawrence Lessig's arguments for sampling and mixing as Fair Use. Professor Lessig believes making music and videos from protected content ought to be legal at least some of the time, that it's a great creative enterprise that should be encouraged. The screeder (screedist?) not only didn't buy the argument; he thought LL was smoking dope.

Me, I couldn't agree more with Professor Lessig. Not just because of the fun and satisfaction I've had making my own music videos, but every time I see something like this: a battle between Neo and Robocop that's hard to tell from the real thing. If an amateur production like this doesn't take anything away from the original sources, why shouldn't it be encouraged?

I can't believe it's been two months and fifty posts since I've mentioned Farscape here. Shocking, really.

Which is my unsubtle way of leading into a slightly Scape-related post. It seems Paul Goddard, who played the death-obsessed and generally unbalanced Stark on Farscape, has put together a jazzy album. Now granted, I'm not remotely objective where the work of the Scape cast is concerned. But I think it's really good. You can judge for yourself at Coleman Smith, Paul's nom de tune website. I'm hoping they can get it on the iTunes Music Store, so I can express my fannish enthusiasm on my other blog.

My high school chemistry teacher once told us that no experiment is a total loss; it can always be used as a bad example. And no lousy book turned turgid movie either, as long as there are good parodists about. Now granted; I've neither read nor seen The Da Vinci Code; I'm taking its lousihood on faith. But ya gotta love The Norman Rockwell Code, which manages to be more entertaining in 35 minutes than Ron Howard will ever be in two and a half hours. And for those of us who worship at another altar, there's iCryptex. Guess they liked the new New York store as much as I did.

I got back last night from a flying visit to New York. Flying both literally and figuratively; left home early Tuesday morning, got to my hotel around 6:30 PM, had meetings Wednesday until I had to leave for the airport around 3. Definitely not the way I like to travel.

Although it wasn't all insides of hotel rooms, meeting rooms and airports. After a healthy dinner (yeah, right) at the Carnegie Deli (well, it was healthier than the even more obscene meals of the diners around me), we took a walk over to Apple's new Temple of Consumption at 59th and Fifth Avenue. The glass cube (what is it with Steve and Cubes?) looks as good in person as it does in the photos that filled the web at the store's opening a few days ago. But inside's even more impressive: one very large open space full of Macs and iPods and all sorts of goodies for both. I managed to avoid spending any money, but only because I can do that just as easily when I get home. It was a near thing.

Professor Lawrence Lessig has a blog post about the ads the Competitive Enterprise Institute is running in opposition to Al Gore's movie An Inconvenient Truth. In case you aren't aware, the CEI is a shill for the oil industry. And one with a well developed sense of the ridiculous. To quote from the ad: "CO2: They call it pollution. We call it life." Yeah, carbon dioxide is natural. So is arsenic.

It reminds me of a routine Robert Klein did on one of his albums. (Yes, the vinyl kind.) He was riffing on a much earlier oil company ad, I think from Amoco. "What can one man do, my friend?" asks the workshirted folk singer. "To fight pollution in the air that's comin' in from everywhere." To which Klein replies, "I'd like to see the president of Amoco put his mouth on the exhaust of a new car with Amoco chugging in it. Then we'd see what one man can do, my friend."

Still, I'm glad to see the oil companies aren't using their profits wastefully. Then again, how many $400 million severance packages do they need?

Or something like that. No, this isn't a rant about school prayer. I just needed something to title this link to another wonderful movie trailer that makes a movie something completely different than the way it started. This time it's biblical epic as teen comedy. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you:

10 Things I Hate About Commandments!

(Spotted on Boing Boing, as if you couldn't guess.)

Speaking of Kepler's, and of my author friend, we're now just two weeks away from the release of my friend Barry's latest John Rain thriller. I have my copy already, one of the few benefits of the startup disaster where we met. Anyway, that means I can say with confidence that The Last Assassin is exciting and fast paced, with a few revelations that took me completely by surprise and will likely do the same for you.

Barry will be reading from the new book on Thursday, June 1st at 7:30. If you haven't heard him speak, you're missing out. Kepler's calendar of author appearances is available on their website.

Yesterday afternoon I had the great pleasure of hearing Tom Friedman of The New York Times speak at Kepler's Books in Menlo Park. Even better, I got to bypass a Standing Room Only crowd to take a front row seat, thanks to my friend Barry. When attending events at bookstores, it's good to know a successful author.

Mr. Friedman was articulate on the subjects of globalization, education and energy, all of which he covers in the 2.0 version of his book The World Is Flat. He was also warm and funny, two charactistics I appreciate in any presenter. I was particularly impressed by the way he discussed how his views had changed since writing the first version of the book; Mr. Friedman was rather more upbeat about our ability to compete on the world stage with India and China. He pointed out that the US has more advanced degree students in Sanskrit than does India, which may not do much for the economy but shows the breadth and flexibility of the skill sets we continue to develop. On China, he quoted an old aphorism from his Minnesota childhood: "Never bet on a country that censors Google." Okay, maybe that's not really from his childhood. But the thought is still an important one.

InfoWorld has an article about Apple shutting down Darwin on Intel, the Open Source version of Mac OS X's underpinnings. The piece is mostly about how this is a terrible thing, a point of view I don't disagree with. My problem is with the headlie... excuse me... headline: Apple closes down OS X. Which is plainly untrue; OS X goes on. But I guess Apple locks down OS X isn't nearly as attention-grabbing. Or how about Apple closes down Darwin? Nope, most readers won't know what Darwin is; they'll pass right on by. And Apple closes down Open Source version of OS X must be too long for short attention span headline readers. So I guess Apple closes down OS X really is the best choice. Even if it is 100% wrong.

In my illustrious career in tech, I've sometimes been called upon to provide support to customers. We all have our self-inflicted wound stories, those of us who minister to the technologically challenged. And we have phrases to describe such problems that occur through no fault of the people who built the product. Cockpit was one I learned in my first job; it referred to a cockpit error, or when the plane flies into the ground because of something the pilot did. My personal favorite is the obscure acronym PEBCAK, which means the same thing. Translation: Problem Exists Between Chair And Keyboard. In other words, the user did it.

This isn't a tech support story, although it could be if I'd tried to call tech support to complain about my problem. What problem? Why, the fact that my photos from this weekend came out all yellow. It seems that I took a long drive out to Gold Country on Saturday, both to enjoy the blue sky and sunshine and to give my new and expensive Nikon D200 another workout. I ended up at the American River, just down the road from Auburn, California. It was a pretty spot for some picture taking, so that's just what I did.

Flash forward a few hours to my return home. I loaded my pictures onto my brand new Mac Mini, and was horrified to see a whole lot of yellow among the green. Something must be wrong with the camera; I certainly don't remember things being that yellow!

One aspect of the D200 that has been keeping me busy reading is the multiplicity of adjustments it provides. I've been trying to understand all the settings, and have been combining recommendations from a bunch of different sources in hope of getting the best results. Now I think that was part of my problem; I went back to simple and reset everything until I can experiment with each setting and find the best value. Some of the color adjustments I'd tried might explain a little extra yellow in my pictures. But I was having trouble explaining such a large color shift, especially since other parts of the picture looked pretty good to me.

So today I went out shooting again. Not to Gold Country; I didn't want to go that far. Instead I headed south to San Juan Bautista, to take some shots around the Mission. And along the way I noticed something I should have remembered: there are a hell of a lot of wildflowers out there. The hills are turning from green to more earth tones, as the end of the rain starts to dry out the vegetation. And there are yellow flowers all over, which I saw but didn't remark upon on my Saturday run. Turns out I was only half right; some of that yellow was those settings I'd tried, but the rest was just nature being, well, natural. Gotta pay more attention. As Yogi Berra once said, "You can observe a lot by just watching."

I should have known something was up when I discovered that an email from a new stock photo site I'd just joined ended up in my spam file. But I didn't, despite the fact that the score the antispam program run by my web provider gave the message shouldn't have triggered that reaction. It wasn't until I noticed that two different stock agencies had approved one of my submitted photos but hadn't notified me that I realized something was wrong. And even then, it took a while to put two and two together.

The filtering program I'm talking about is just one stage in my battle against spam. I also have a whole set of rules to capture all sorts of messages the filter doesn't get. Those rules are written in Perl, a wonderfully powerful text processing language that's also really good at letting you (that is, me) shoot yourself (translation: myself) in the foot. Or some other extremity. And so I had done. Again.

The problem is that I had a whole series of strings to search for, any of which will cause a message to be deemed spam and trashed. In Perl, that's a set of parentheses with these phrases separated by vertical bars, the "or" symbol of Perl and lots of other languages. And, not for the first time, I'd accidentally put in one extra vertical bar at the end, like this: (abc|def|ghi|). Which Perl interprets as "get rid of messages containing the string "abc", or "def", or "ghi", or... That last string is empty. Which means it matches anything. Or nothing. And any message that hadn't been stopped by a previous rule gets to this one. And is declared to be spam and thrown away. Oops.

I'd made that mistake before. And I'd written a little job that checks for that string every couple of hours. If it finds it, it mails me a warning. Except of course the warning message ran into the same rule. And it got deleted.

So how did I find this, you ask? Well, I may be stupid and sloppy, but I'm getting better at protecting myself from my stupidity. (And maybe some of the sloppiness too.) Instead of deleting the spam, I throw them all into a file. And I keep a month's worth of these files around; my web provider gives me a lot of space. So once I found and fixed the problem, I was able to go back over today's messages and discover the (very) few good messages that got misidentified as spam. And then went back to yesterday to verify that the problem didn't extend more than a few hours.

So, in the same way that good service when a product fails produces higher customer satisfaction than a product that never breaks in the first place, I've decided I'm smarter for protecting against my own ineptitude than somebody who never fouls up. Yep, that's my story and I'm sticking with it.

My last post told of the arrival of the display I'd ordered for my new Mac Mini. The computer itself arrived yesterday. Which meant that from that moment to this, I've been transferring files and reconfiguring and remembering passwords and the like. Of course, first I had to rip out the old computer. Well, not so much the computer as all the junk that was connected to it, and all the power supplies and USB cables for all that junk. It's amazing how many devices I needed then and how few I have now. Granted, part of that is stuff that no longer works, some of which I'd disposed of long ago. But the cables and in some cases the power bricks remain. But no longer! There are actual square inches of visible desk space around my computer and monitor.

I just finished copying the local copy of my website to the Mini. I'd have done it last night, but figured a few hours of sleep might make me less cranky for work today. Never did have dinner, though. And for anybody who knows me, that'll give you an idea of just how engrossed I was in the whole "get this thing working" process. Which would have gone smoother if I'd used Apple's transfer tool. But when you're reconciling the contents of two computers (my old G4 Cube and my suddenly less than reliable Powerbook) onto one, you want a little more control. At least I do.

And if you're wondering about the Mini, or how well an Intel-based Mac runs all kinds of old PowerPC software, it's amazing. So far it all works, including my copies of Office for the Mac and Photoshop Elements. Even with emulation, a dual core Intel processor with 2 GB of memory does at least as well as a single G4 with 1 GB. Okay, it does better, at least at some things.

Oh, and before I forget, muchas gracias to Elke for helping me get my new system. I know you'll be reading this. You are, right?

Within moments of finishing the previous post, my phone rang. It was the FedEx guy with a delivery: that beautiful new 20" flat screen I'd only ordered around 11:30 yesterday. Now all I need is the Mac Mini to connect it to. Sadly, that'll take a little longer to arrive.

I've been in the market for a new car for a while now. My current vehicle still runs, and it's still giving me good service. But after nine years and 135,000 miles, I'm more than ready for something new. I've been thinking hybrid, both because of ever increasing gas prices (increasing almost daily around here of late) and because every story of corruption and not-so-enlightened self-interest coming out of the Party In Power^TM makes me more determined to do something that's at least a tiny bit better for the planet and my fellow man.

The problem of course is that I relish another visit to the oral surgeon more than I do a trip to a car dealer. I've been on the receiving end of high pressure sales tactics in the past. And even though I never actually let myself be sold by one of these sharks in suits, the thought of the encounter was enough to make me want to forget the whole thing and maybe get a pair of roller skates instead.

But I finally took action yesterday afternoon. I was in a spending mood, having just finished buying a new Mac Mini and 20" LCD, courtesy of my blogger friend Elke's Apple employee discount. (I introduced her to the German pretzels at the Cupertino farmer's market. She saved me a few hundred on a badly needed computer upgrade. Seemed like an excellent trade to me.) So after a rather nice Thai lunch, Elke headed back to work and I headed off to do battle with the auto industry in the person of my local Toyota dealer.

Which didn't turn out the way I had expected at all. I walked into the showroom hoping to see a Prius or a Camry hybrid. But I was disappointed; no hybrids inside. So I wandered out to the lot, where I found one of each. Interestingly, I was approached only once by a sales rep who asked if he could help. When I replied with my usual "Not at the moment; just looking", he walked away. Hardly car salesmanlike at all, I thought.

After giving both cars a quick once over (both were marked as fleet cars, and neither had the big stickers with options and price), I went looking for somebody to talk to. The rep I found got me the next one in rotation, who turned out to be the same one I'd been approached by earlier. He gave me a test drive in the brand new Camry hybrid (so new it was his first experience driving it as well as mine), answered my questions, showed me some amazing bits of featuredom (like the audio connection for my iPod and where the heck they hid the CD slot) and generally let me enjoy tooling around in a set of wheels with just over fifty miles in it.

When we got back, I asked to try out the Prius, although I was pretty much convinced I knew what I wanted to do. Somebody beat us to it, so we talked over process and paperwork and color choices on the Camry while we waited for the Prius. (Nice car, the Prius, although not nearly as nice as the Camry in handling, comfort, quiet or amenities. And just about the same price, assuming you're like me and want all the goodies. But of course, as good as the gas mileage is on the Camry, the Prius is in another league entirely.)

So that was it. I left a deposit to get on the waiting list. And I have the next couple of months to wait and anticipate, assuming somebody doesn't change their mind and let me sneak in sooner. Expensive day, Friday. And I can't help feeling like my Acura is giving me dirty looks.

Yes, it's Cinco de Mayo, which various posts remind me has nothing whatsoever to do with Mexican independence. Which is funny, since that's what I always thought was behind all those crowds waiting for tables where they can eat chips and drink margaritas. But no, Cinco de Mayo is about a French defeat in a small Mexican town a hundred and forty-four years ago. Which didn't stop Napoleon's army; they eventually took Mexico City, installed their Emperor and ruled the country for a few years. Not that any of that matters today; any excuse for drinking heavily is a good one. Just avoid Mexican restaurants if you aren't into long lines.

Yeah, I know that's an oxymoron. But hear me out.

I wandered innocently over to Brian Ibbott's Coverville to find some information on a track he played recently for my other blog. But first I got caught up with this music video about our new Fed chairman. Which, despite being in WMV, played fine on my Mac. And which gives me a whole new respect for business school students, both for their musical skills and their political views.

According to reports, President Bush described the selection of new leadership in Iraq as "a turning point". There certainly have been a lot of turning points in the three years since that Mission Accomplished banner. Could it be because we've been going in circles all this time?