Blogging Ottinger (tim)

I think this is just beautiful: it is a mindmap of linux distributions. My friend Michael was bothered by historical innacuracy, so he presented me with a different map of LinuxSpace.

Pretty much everything in OpenOffice.org makes me happy. I have had a problem converting some files from powerpoint lately, and that makes me sad.

It doesn’t happen in every diagram, but some diagrams do not display correctly.

In the normal editing mode everything looks fine, but there is a flaw in slideshow mode (where you need it to be most correct). The problem shows up when there is a connecting line between two diagonal points, and the line has one or more 90-degree elbows. Impress will add an additional diagonal line between the two points. The extra lines can make some of my more complex slides look totally messy, and destroys the teaching value of said slides.

I think the diagrams originated in PowerPoint. I can ungroup and regroup the various elements, and that fixes the lines. However it ruins the text. In order to recover the text, I have to go to every text box on the screen and right-click, select PositionAndSize, then click the boxes for FitWidthToText and FitHeightToText, at which time the text returns to its original size.

A very busy diagram may have more than a dozen little text boxes, especially if it is demonstrating something complex in UML like a big state machine with nested states.

It’s very frustrating, but I have only about 40 more diagrams to go.

I tried recording a macro to make the changes, but the macro mechanism isn’t in OO.o’s drawing program. I tried selecting all the text fields, but then the boxes I need to check are disabled (grayed-out). I tried changing the default style of all the text, and it looked like it worked wonders, until I pasted it back into Impress, at which time I suddenly had multiple point sizes. It was a total mess. It’s easier for me to redraw some of these than mess with fixing them.

I tried a few formats. I can get eps files to come in okay and resize, but none of my drawing tools are providing me with great UML eps files. Back to the drudgery. I think I’ll install a mouse odometer and see how much I’m really chasing the cursor around with this.

Grrrr…

If you read Don Dodge’s article you will find that lots of people did, but this time around the most lines-of-code change rested on the shoulders of twenty people, and the rest did the rest. It might surprise some to know that RedHat and IBM are not the obvious owner/beneficiaries of Linux that some schills make them out to be. Linux is MUCH more than just Redhat, IBM, and SuSE (though these companies are strong players). IBM accounted for only 7% (that we know of), and Redhat only 12%.

This will be disappointing to Gundeep who thinks M$ should buy Linux. From… umm… some of the companies who distribute it. I’m not getting how that is supposed to work. Wouldn’t they have to buy it from someone who *owns* it? He did mention that Linux is not as “independent” an operating system as Windows. That’s true enough, I suppose, if “independent” means “totally owned by a single entity” so that a slave is independent, whereas a small business owner is “not as independent.”

We need to consider that Linux is “owned” by a lot of nonprofits in many countries, and a lot of them aren’t interested in “selling out” to Microsoft (though enough money makes possibilities out of impossibilities).

The ugly sound bite:

What would prevent Microsoft from killing Linux just so Windows could continue to be the dominant OS maker? Nothing, to be honest.

I’m sure they’d love to, but as Dodge’s article states, Linux isn’t the product of three distro vendors, or five, or ten. It’s the work of a lot of people. If someone buys out three or five major vendors, there are hundreds now waiting for their chance. Any of them could be the next RedHat, the next SuSE, the next Ubuntu. And Ubuntu is a relative newcomer to the camp, and the next dominant distributions may be newcomers with the energy to run with it.

Gundeep’s article says as much. Linux would rise from the ashes if the major distributions were bought out and collapsed. The strategy would not work.

What we need isn’t for Microsoft to buy Linux out. What Gundeep Hora suggests is for them to buy into Linux. Allow their people to work on it and contribute changes under the terms of the GPL. Keep their DRM and licensing and competitive measures out of it, and participate. He suggest making Linux a division of MS. I think it would be okay for Microsoft to have a Linux division that contributed code on the same terms as IBM and Apache and all the rest.

Hora suggests it would be good for Microsoft. I bet it would. They could learn a lot from it. If they want the greatest possible next-generation PC operating system, maybe they should pitch in their 7-to-12% and help the Linux team continue building it.

Wow. I read an article at Coding Horror stating that a lot of programming job candidates cannot write code at all. No kidding? I used to do a lot of interviewing at some of my previous jobs, and I usually had a great group of candidates. We were a little harsh on programming puzzles and could have gone more gently, I suppose. We had good candidates and hired the best of them (or so I think).

I remember one guy who was given a bit of code to read and the question was “what does this code do?”. I remember his answer, “it’s C, so it could do anything at all. There is no way to tell without firing up the debugger.” I thought it was the worse answer I’d ever heard. The problem was a two-or-three line example. I remember that guy being hired against my recommendation because of talents other than programming, and maybe that turned out okay. I don’t recall.

But just in case someone asks, here’s some python:

for number in range(100):
    value = \"\"
    if number%3==0: value += \"Fizz\"
    if number%5==0: value += \"Buzz\"
    print value or number

Maybe it’s not elegant, but it is a program.

What should Dell do to make the public happy? Apparently the answer is to embrace open source operating systems and applications. It would make me happy. This fact should not be surprising, but it’s being reported as if it is surprising or at least affirming. The story has also been slashdotted.

Frankly, I don’t want to buy a computer with vista on it. I’ll buy a kit computer and assemble it myself to avoid an unwanted operating system. Of course, some of the kits look pretty cool. And I do need something with a ton of storage. Maybe I can avoid vista and get what I need. Or else maybe I can wait until Debian is being offered by Dell.

Addendum 01 March 2007: Dell says they’re in no hurry to ship Linux. If they are going to ship linux, they should take their time and get a handle on how they want to do it. It is a bigger issue as the conversation between me and Steve indicates. I’m sure there are plenty of issues to sort out technically and with their channel partners. It is a good time for all the Linux standardization work.

According to Forbes security article a lot of the weakness of Vista is in the Digital Rights Management that is a non-negotiable part of the package. A Shame.

Meanwhile, it looks like neither Vista nor the Zune are doing well. We’re told that we expected too much from it. I didn’t expect too much. I think it’s the cost of upgrades and the wealth of good alternatives. This is a different situation than when 95 came out with great uptake, and when the XP release parties happened.

It was a very snowy weekend. We got the drive cleared out, but noticed that there was more than 6 inches on the road. We were dreading going back out and cleaning up after the plow came through. Right we were. It was hard, slushy, packed stuff we had to move. I had a hardworking helper though:

No, it’s not a trick of foreshortening caused by a long lense. Yes, the pile of snow is almost as big as he is. Of course, that’s the snow at the side of the drive, where we’ve been shoveling it through the past several snows, so it doesn’t tell the story. What we need is a picture of my helper beside the snow that the plow left for us. Something like this:

I now have a lot more respect for those in New York state where they get several feet of snow at a time. Three days of snow up here has me feeling pretty sore and stiff and achy. I’m feeling all the times I used my back instead of legs and arms, and I’m feeling my legs and arms. I guess I need regular exercise to stay in shape for the winter workout.

In the interest of fairness, I did get a little help from the older boy, who wasn’t feeling very good and still came out and helped clear the drive with me. I just didn’t have the camera when he was out. He’ll thank me for that.

I have been getting my OTR downloads from RadioLovers via the web, and via podcasts Brando, Botar, and Boxcars. These are great sources for the OTR collector.

Now I’ve become pretty excited about Archive.org, and in particular their archives of old time radio programs. I’ve also been browsing some of their tech and video categories. This is a great resource for the OTR fan. I don’t know that it has the detail that the hard-core collector would want, but if you just like to listen and read the little blurbs, it’s great stuff.

I’ve been listening mostly to podcasts for the past several months. I have (as anyone would) an eclectic mix of technical and entertainment programs. Sometime I’ll have to re-post my list of sources, but for now I just wanted to mention the good work at Archive.org.

We’re in the middle of the big winter storm. I’m impressed. We got several inches in a pretty short period, and now it’s coming down in little pellets. We walked in from supper, and less than a half hour later our footprints are just little depressions. The steps I shoveled have disappeared completely. I can see the depression of Jason’s snow angel, made on the way in. It’s beautiful enough to override the dread of having to clean it off the sidewalk and drive. Maybe tomorrow I’ll have some pix.

My youngest and I went out to get a start on the shoveling. He’s a hard-working kid. I think he would have outworked me. Nice to have eager help. I was told that you shouldn’t shovel snow unless you can run a mile. I’ve not tried running in a long time, I doubt I could do it.

Anyway, the snow on the street at the end of my drive is over 8 inches deep. Most of that in the past few hours. That’s what the snow plows are going to be throwing back in my driveway. I’m half-glad church is cancelled for tomorrow. I’m going to be busting and shoveling snow in the morning, with short bouts of pain relievers and back-straightening rest. Already we’re getting some ice pellets in the mix.

It truly is beautiful, but it’s more than I’m used to. I’m glad I didn’t move into the parts of new york where they get several feet of snow overnight. It’s good weather to consider nesting. I think we should mostly stay in tomorrow, eat homemade soups, and enjoy some of our DVD and book and game collections. Since I bought my wife volumes 1 and 4 of the James Bond collection, we have plenty to look at.

Unsurprisingly, a recent study shows that worrying about your proficiency lowers your proficiency at least where math is concerned. The headline suggests that you not worry about it, so that you can use your brain to actually do it.

Yes, fretting is a problem. I wonder if this extrapolates to other complex tasks like testing or reading and writing code? Like accounting and bookkeeping? Scheduling? Hardware design? I don’t know that it does, but I would like to pretend it is so. It would mean that people who practice management-by-heaping-on-pressure are actually hamstringing their underlings (we like to call them “coworkers”), and perhaps are part of the reason that their teams cannot perform.

I personally suffer from anxiety when it comes to work that requires a background I don’t have. I have even been completely halted by the stress a few times. Worrying about whether you will be able to pick up the ideas and do the work really does not help, but the remaining problem is how to not worry when you are faced with something dauntingly unfamiliar. I’m working on that. I found that vitamins and sleep and a break can help a lot, though it’s hard to take a break when you know that you need to spend *more* time on task, not less.

Clearly collecting the necessary background (reading, watching videos) and developing the necessary skills (practice, adding bugs to see the error messages) are the the most certain ways to deal with the problem. There is nothing like a small and growing body of successes to raise morale, release stress, and increase job performance. The real problem is when your “test” comes before you have any successes under your belt. This is true especially if you are competing or collaborating with people who are already successful in the area of endeavor. The perception that you are not keeping up can actually slow your progress to a crawl. From there it is a downward spiral as getting more behind creates greater anxiety.

This is why programmers and admin types tend to spend all their waking hours developing new skills and new understanding. Time away from work is time to make mistakes and work through misunderstandings, so that one is not hobbled by whichever skill-anxiety they’re dealing with at the time. I’m not saying it’s healthy for us to do so. We should go play ball, wrestle with the kids, ride a bike, or walk the dog. It wouldn’t hurt for us to spend happy non-complaining time with our spouses. But sometimes we have to immerse in order to come up to speed.

This is a reason that it is good for companies to plan for training and mentoring and ramp-up time. It’s a reason to back off on the stress. It’s a reason to allow time for reading, and maybe even provide recommended reading materials.

Home-backgrounding is also a good reason to use open-source tools. Having a big US$4000.00 software development suite is good for the ego and might even be helpful (maybe) but it is not within the range of the developer working at home, on the train, or in an airport somewhere. Open source tools will be easily accessible, even if they lack some features that look pretty hot in the demo and brochure.

What other methods are known for conquering tough learning tasks? What is it the successful students do (besides the all-nighter)?

Jon Tillman gives us the lastest example of how DRM simply cannot work. The quote from the guy who cracked it was telling:

Nothing was hacked, cracked or even reverse engineered btw: I only had to watch the “show” in my own memory. No debugger was used, no binaries changed.

They may not all fail this easily, but they all fail. Some DRM schemes even take time and effort. Rather than cheer for the next big DRM scheme or the next big DRM smasher, I think we need to cheer for the folks that are choosing to not use it. You may think it’s cool to play the electronic countermeasures game with your music, but I think it’s so much better to support the vendors who are making better decisions and not wasting their time and money on fruitless control schemes.

Who do I think the heroes are?

• eMusic, MagnaTune, IRateRadio, and similar DRM-free content providers
• the indie bands who have the guts to release mp3s instead of keeping their music locked up.
• well-known (and lesser-known) artists who are releasing their back-catalogs in MP3.
• podcasters, and podsafe music providers without these guys
• Video podcasters, again giving us information and entertainment in open formats.
• Authors of podcatchers like juice/ipodder and democracy TV and others
• those who release old works to the public domain, and those who collect and archive them for the rest of us
• archive.org, making so much of our video and audio heritage available to us in mpeg and mp3 formats
• video sites (YouTube, etc) and videographers, making amateur entertainment available to the masses
• those who develop open source programming languages, operating systems and tools, which in turn make this free entertainment ecosystem possible.

If you want to know where the future is being born, you need to look to this wonderful collection of good people working on good ideas. We’ve never had so many alternatives to corporate programming. There is an embarassing wealth of talent in the world. I think it’s exciting that we get to see the good, the bad, and the ugly if we so desire and free media ranges from silly flash cartoons and old B movies to serious art and documentary.

There is a challenge here. Because of the internet, we don’t really need to be spoon-fed “DRM-enriched” media from a small number of large corporations. Instead, those who make a living producing content will have to compete for our attention, and not just against two or three other corporations which are turning out the same nonsense. They have to compete against the filmmakers of the past, the amateur filmmakers of the present, and the increasingly professional output of enterprising new media companies. That’s hard for them (and they have my sympathy) but it’s good for us. It is a sea change. The new reality is that we have many other choices, and they can join with them or lose us as viewers.

This freedom is not without its villians. There are people who have turned their cameras to the lowest of human instincts, in things like “bum fights” or other (worse) violence against people and animals. At least they provide the evidence against themselves, I suppose. The movie industry at its worst was never as bad as some of these home films. And it isn’t just violence that we have to watch for. Hatemongering in all its forms will be offered up as entertainment, from lowbrow political commentary to racist humor to whatever. Of course, the ability to record this kind of “entertainment” did not create the desire for it, but it might encourage sociopathic behavior that might have otherwise not have been acted out.

Our freedom of expression will crash against ethics and legality and even basic humanity as it always has. If one is free to argue against the mighty corporation, then one is also free to insult the lowly and disenfranchised. I believe in basic human dignity and respect and I know that we will have to find a way to ensure that those values don’t vanish in a world of cheap second-hand thrills and brutish acts. Even in independent film-making, there needs to be accountability for treatment of people and animals. This will be the hardest part of the new media challenge. It will be up to people to help promote decency and draw attention to the truly indecent. Sometimes all we have to do is change the channel, but sometimes we may need to pick up a phone and involve authorities in prosecution of the villians among us. Freedom is tough that way. It is the freedom to go wrong, as well as the freedom to do right.

I am happy for the wealth of good, useful, entertaining podcasts and video podcasts. I am happy for the availability of old-time radio and movies. I am happy that kids can make silly Numa Numa lipsync videos. I think it’s good that flash cartoonists can work in parody and wit to entertain us. I love that we have web cartoons and blogs and (v)podcasts. I am thrilled at the online archives of historical events, airshow footage, and public domain movies. There is a great richness of good, fun, and pleasant entertainment for us.

My plan is to enjoy the best of what is offered with a clean conscience.

It appears that PassAlong is offering DRM-free mp3s also. It is only on the indie catalog, not on the major labels, but they are apparently touting compatibility with all music players as a major plus. And it is.

It’s odd to watch the majors go through tough times and even layoffs while companies like eMusic and other take more and more of the market share. I guess it’s inevitable and probably a good thing overall, but it must be hard for those who work for companies in that subscribe to the whole DRM-heavy, sue-your-customers way of doing business.

Of course the whole story on PassAlong means nothing to me. Even if they gave it away free, they aren’t interested in people who don’t use windows:

I got a dvd ripping program, thinking that I can rip my old B movies to file and then use mencode to drip the resolution and framerate and make them appropriate for use on my handheld (gp2x). I was hoping that I could even take my wife’s James Bond movies with me on the road, but no.

It turns out that my laptop doesn’t have enough storage to rip one DVD. I really didn’t count on how big the crazy things are. I will have to keep downloading ipod-ready video and transcoding it instead. That’s fine, really. I get a lot of stuff that way, and old B movies are a lot of fun. I’m working my way through the Smiling Jack saturday serial, and it’s actually kind of fun and interesting. The WWII espionage theme is interesting from a historic perspective, and the story is good for a saturday serial.

When I get a REAL machine setup (we’re running entirely from our laptops) I will be setting it up to hold all our media. I plan to spend many many days feeding in CDs and DVDs as I walk past. Ultimately, I want to have our laptops and (eventually) desktop machines all playing movies and music and games on demand. We’ll have playlists suited to each member of the family.

For now, Democracy TV is giving me plenty of new, old movies and I’ll be happy with that.

Steve says it’s all because of the pirates but I suspect he’s wrong. He says MS is going to crack down on piracy and that will bring sales up. I think that the theory underlying this is that all Windows releases are infinitely popular have an eager audience, so slow sales must be because the audience is getting their copies elsewhere. What if the real reason is that people don’t want Vista?

I’ve heard non-techs telling each other to not buy Vista. I don’t want it. If I buy a machine with Vista on it, I will refuse the EULA and install Linux. Why? Partly because I like Linux better than Windows, and partly because they’ve cracked down on pirates by making their licensing terms completely abhorrent. Cracking down more will drive customers to Linux, I’m sure.

The under-pillow speaker is just a good idea. It’s hard and unpleasant to wear headphones to bed, and I don’t like to keep my wife awake with my old radio programs or horror movies. If you are a parent, you want to be able to hear your kids moving through the house (or anything else that might be doing so), so you don’t really want to obstruct your ears.

These can be kept quiet, so you can’t hear them over on the next pillow. It’s a great idea. You have one ear to the pillow, one in the air, so your kids aren’t neglected. They even have long cables so you don’t to have your media player in the bed with you.

I’m planning to get one for each family member.

This is one pretty rondo guitar:

The next time someone waxes rhapsodic about soaring with eagles, please remind them that eagles are very large and very powerful predators. They don’t soar because it’s stirring and beautiful and graceful. They soar because they’re looking for something to kill. Soaring with the eagles is not a pleasant experience like some would have us believe. I guess it’s appealing if you want to float around looking for things to kill, though.

There is a very interesting site out called Before the Music Dies. I may have to order the DVD. They seem to be showing how pop divas are manufactured, and how the business works. I think it’s worth a few minutes of your time, especially if you really love music and are frustrated by the oh-so-corporate pop pablum that is pop music.

I have ordered the DVD from Amazon. I will have a review of it later on. Interesting stuff.

More executives come out against DRM. I think that the times are a-changing. I guess that when you realize that what you want is not what your customers want, you consider a change. I’m learning Java for the same reason. It’s what the customers want, not what I like. Frankly, I don’t see the interest but I have an interest in being relevant.

Ultimately, I see this as an attempt by an industry to create a paradigm shift that their customers didn’t buy. It’s so much that they failed to see that the world was moving to a portable, digital world. I think it was a bit of hubris in thinking that they could decide what that means for the customer and the industry. I don’t much blame them, but they’ve held on far too long to an idea that can’t work. I feel bad for them.

I saw the RIAA’s episode of The Proud Family. It was pretty crummy, focused primarily on convincing people that health of the music industry as we know it is a critical component of the world and local economy and that anything bad for the music industry will collapse the economy. The dad’s snack factory was losing big money because people weren’t buying snacks for the CD release parties. CD release party? I’ve never seen one. I don’t thing that Frito Lay will suffer from having fewer obscure events like that. The local stores closed in the cartoon, and I think that’s wrong too. The availability of music for download increases packaged music sales, provided the packaged music is DRM-free. Of course, you have to provide product that consumers want. Sadly, the labels are hurting and laying off workers. Maybe they should lay off strippers masquerading as pop divas, too. Maybe we’re more interested in the Nora Jones’ of the world than the Brittneys.

100% of my listening experience these days is .ogg and .mp3 files on either an iPod or other portable music device. My favorite portable music device (by relative hours of use) is my laptop. If I can’t carry my music on compact flash or secure digital or in flash memory on a player or on my hard disk — well, that music doesn’t exist. And more of my music is independent because I can get it DRM-free and it’s cool to know bands that your friends don’t.

So maybe the world is turning toward consumers like me. That’s kinda cool, too.

I got a stock spam that came masquerading as a porn spam. What will they think of next?

Don’t bother buying your old guitar strings anymore. Yeah, you have been using the Elixirs or buying from D’addario or whatever and you’re pretty happy. But you should try the Dean Markley alchemy strings. I used several on my old wood box, and had finally settled on those nanoweb strings. I wanted longer tone life and brighter sound and they seemed to give it until they started shredding pretty bad. They are good strings, and I’m not knocking them.

However I bought a set of Markleys. They were Blue Steel (a little up market) and when I installed them the ball popped off one of the strings. Sure, I was pretty unhappy. I had to go get another set right away or not play it. After fuming, I decided to be a good guy and write them a letter. They asked me to return the bad strings for analysis (did I ever get those shipped? I think I did.) and they replaced them. Those guys are DM are pretty cool. They ended up replacing them with a more upscale set. I got the Alchemy strings to try out.

My guitar never sounded as good with any new strings as they did with these. They’re darker in color than most strings, and that is novel and even attractive. They look more like copper than stainless. The sound is incredible, though. They’re bright and clear and all I could ask from my poor Ibanez acoustic. I was pretty pleased, and played a little on it from time to time. In the meantime, though, I picked up an American Standard Strat HSS and then later on got my ovation solidbody BreadWinner outfitted with Seymour Duncan pickups… to make a long story short, I ended up not playing acoustic guitar much.

I pull the old box out of the case a week or two ago and played a little. After sitting for quite a long time in various weather conditions, after moving in the middle of winter, after being hauled around in the car, after being played and put up without cleaning, after being passed around and after sitting around for at least a year they sound excellent. Great tone life on these puppies.

I had an extra set and gave it to a friend of mine who is playing in my church praise team, and he agreed that these are beautiful and cool-looking. These were a nice power-up for his Washburn.

I have been talking these strings up for a while when I talk to acoustic guitarists, but I don’t know that I publically stated my wholehearted support. The good folks at Dean Markley really have done something special, and I’d not trade one pair of alchemy strings for two sets of Elixirs.

Consider ‘em your next change-out. I think you’ll be pleased.