Cafe Bucky

UPS, as in Uninterruptible Power Supply …

Our power flickered off, then on this morning, which immediately made me think “Winter’s almost here, get a UPS”. I don’t know anything about them, other than there a few big brands such as APC and Belkin. It’s a long-shot, but if anyone reading this has a suggestion, let me know …

Last year I wrote “Christmas Sanity”. Hmm, it still holds true. There’s an awful lot of JUNK being bought on this Black Friday. Go, Economy, Go :=/ I don’t need anything, but if someone insisted, they could check out my wishlist. I admire gifts that take a little thought (a plane ticket to, say, Sydney Australia would be excellent, or failing that, a Pastrami Sandwich from Katz’s in NYC). All I really want for Christmas is camraderie and yummy food.

A very Happy Thanksgiving to friends and family out there!

Ya know, Sony’s been going about this whole Audio DRM thing just plain wrong. It’s obvious they haven’t thought through the ideas of Really Really Protecting music.

He’as what they needs ta do…. Ya start with an encrypted CD that can ONLY be played on a computer. Each $24.95 CD comes with a USB dongle. When you go to play the CD for the first time, the decryption jukebox phones home to Sony for, get this, an “activation code”. The user simply types in an 84 character phrase printed in “fast-fade” ink on the CD sleeve. They then enter in the serial number of the USB dongle. The connection then activates the dongle and player combination, good for 50 hours of play. Quite naturally, USB dongles can be daisy chained to support up to 34 Sony CDs in your collection at any one time (restricted only by space, power, and airflow considerations)

Of course, the weak point in the chain here is that any old fool can tap into the audio output from the sound card. That’s why Sony is introducing the new “Plays For A While” PCI and PCMCIA cards. All CD output goes through these cards, and is broadcast wirelessly to the new “Sony Wireless Decryption Bookshelf Speakers”. Each speaker takes only 16 D batteries, and decrypts the proprietary 4096-bit soundstream for playback. It is still possible for consumers to copy music by placing microphones in front of these speakers, but rest assured that the fine engineers at Sony will come up with “Only Hears With Ears” technology, rendering all recording devices useless.

That’s what’sa comin! Just in time for Christmas 2006. While this may decrease worldwide sales of all Sony music to 22,450 units worldwide per year, at least they will ALL be truly copy-protected!

This is one of those simple things that could save your laptop from an early death … Sometime pretty shortly after I got my PowerBook, I realized that it got Really Hot on the bottom. Heat is bad for laptops.

My super low-tech solution for whenever I go to cafes or somewhere else where I’m not using my trusty iCurve? I use those little plastic caps that ship with the video adapter cables. You know.. the ones they put on the ends to keep dust out. Don’t throw them away! I just put one on either side under my laptop (by the hinge). It’s just enough for some airflow, and gives me a little angle that’s better for typing. Simple. Done and done!

An inevitable question I’ll hear over the next few weeks or months will be “So, Where Do You See Yourself, Five Years From Now?”. There are many answers to that, and it would take too long to list them here.

So here’s one of the answers, focusing on “my personal tech projects”, as opposed to “getting a degree” or “travel” or “write a book”, etc. …

I’ve written about FlexiPhoto quite a bit. What I haven’t gone into is how ThereThen Addresses and Sub-posts tie in. The condensed version is: They Do! There’s an overall concept of being able to click on a link, and have a draggable window pop up that has multiple choices of where to go next, where those choices have to do with relevant Locations and/or Time.

Here’s an example to help out. We’ll deal with looking up photos:

• Click on a location within Google Maps
• That pops up a draggable window with a photo from FlexiPhoto .. one that is closest to that location, and closest to the current time
• The window has a few controls in it, which allow searching by date, or a range of dates, or keywords/phrases, etc.

To sum up, over the next few years, I’d like to work on two front ends for searching photos: one is by Map, and one is by Calendar. The two complement each other very well:

• Map - clicking on a point brings up a Calendar with days/date-ranges indicated. The hotspots on the calendar have photos, collections, or exhibits
• Calendar - clicking on a day brings up a Map of points that indicate relevant photos, collections, etc.

Of course, with a grant, this will take a year or less, and then I’ll have another 4 years left to answer the question! Nah, I don’t seriously believe that. There will be iterations on the theme. My thought is that combining the elements of Location and Time for searching in a web app (and my keen interest is for searching photos) is something that hasn’t been explored enough. A lot will done outside of the context of traditonal forms.

Slight update: obviously a prototype or draft version of all the functionality bundled together isn’t going to take a full-time year. I’m thinking of production quality AJAX & Flash front ends, testing, docs, and so on — that’ll take some time.

Yep, it’s true. There’s a a new alpha of FlexiPhoto available

I promise I’ll get to beta before I run out of coffee names. Next step: scope the “2.5 vs 2.6″ feature list.

I’ve been getting a lot of bounced spam (where the spammer forges a made up return address with one of my domains, an all too common problem). Almost all of it involves scams that want the recipient to click on a website within uk.geocities.com. To get an idea of the magnitude of this problem, google for “spam return address forgery”. It goes without saying that my machines have nothing to do with sending this tripe - the problem stems from the fact that anyone can easily craft whatever return address they want. The spammers are interested in clicks on their web sites, not returned emails.

Note to UK GeoCities: Do A Better Job Of Shutting These Idiots Down! What Are You Waiting For?!

I’ll be checking into SPF. It really is high time for MTA’s (email) to start standardizing on some sort of sender authentication.