Posts for May 2008

Cory Doctorow and Little Brother on Boing Boing tv

One of the newest episodes of Boing Boing tv features Cory Doctorow dialing in from his Little Brother U.S. signing tour. I'm enjoying it, so I thought I'd toss it in the pot for those of you who don't frequent Boing Boing tv:

May 28, 2008 permalink | Comments (0)

An Interview with Jo Walton

In a romp around Wikipedia this evening, I bumped into a link to an really nice interview with Jo Walton, the author of the books Farthing and Ha'penny (among others) that I've ranted so much about recently. The interview requires a subscription to The Internet Review of Science Fiction, but they have a Casual level that is free as in beer. Note: I think they're probably worth an actual paid subscription, though. Looks pretty nice. I like SF review and commentary, and I think I can live w/ $15-25. *grin* (I say, I say...that's a joke, for those missing it. Good writing makes 15 bucks look WAY cheap. This is a bargain.)

The interview is well worth reading. Jo Walton gives a great description of the background for Farthing, and I have even more respect for her now, as I hadn't realized she was the instigator of International Pixel-Stained Peasant's Day. She has a lively discussion of the implications of said day with the interviewer as well. All in all, an excellent read.

May 27, 2008 permalink | Comments (0)

Better living through more caffeine

I, like many geeky computer types, am addicted to caffeine. I've tried to wean myself off of it more than once...but it's not pleasant. For me, or for those around me. So a few years ago, I gave up on giving it up, and just embraced the addiction.

Unfortunately, all was still not well. The flaw is the morning; I am simply not fit to be around until I'm at least somewhat caffeinated, but I don't make coffee at home before I leave. So my co-workers...well, they put up with a very, very difficult to deal with Ken. I feel bad about it, but what to do? I like my sleep!

I finally got a clue. This week, I started taking a caffeine pill immediately when I get up, and it is working great. I'm less cranky, feel better by the time I get to the office, and I'm less of a strain on my co-workers. Win-win! I was reluctant to do this for a long while; I had an...incident...with caffeine pills back in the early '90s (there IS a lethal dose of caffeine, but I only got halfway there). So I'd been a little skittish. But I'm a big boy now; I think I can handle it. *grin*

May 23, 2008 permalink | Comments (0)

RFID tags, pay per bag, and they STILL lose 'em

I was reading an article this morning on the new American Airlines luggage charge (THAT's gonna go over well), and noticed an aside starting on page 3...Las Vegas is using RFIDs in outgoing luggage tags now to help move bags more efficiently.

Now, I'm not saying I'm even completely against this, used correctly...but I had no idea that it was occuring. THAT I don't like...especially since I have a bag sitting in the hallway that just came back from Vegas! Checking...nope, no I'm an arphid note on it.

But oh yeah...it's there:

Nice, eh? And I carried this around (out of airport, past who knows what kind of scanner, on transit, etc.) without knowing about it. And of course, they're all already sync'd with a person's ID directly. Hrrrmmmm.

And as for slippery slope...from the article: This new system "won't solve every problem, but it's certainly played a part in allowing this airport to operate efficiently," she said, "and it's got the potential to do even more once it's rolled out [on] a wider basis."

I bet it does.

UPDATE: to clarify, I changed "...in outgoing luggage now..." to "...in outgoing luggage tags now..." above, after the post made it onto boingboing (woot!). It was a typo, and the photos make it clear what I'm talking about, but apparently people thought it worth mentioning. *grin* Sorry for any confusion.

May 22, 2008 permalink | Comments (18)

And the winner is...Google App Engine

It's nice to have choices. Really, it is. But sometimes it causes the actual, you know, DOING of stuff to lose traction. I'm working on a new webapp, and I spent several hours this weekend going over the pros and cons of various development models:

Standard dev model, presumably under Django (similar to kenzoid.com's backend)
Semi-standard model, but with CouchDB backend (either Django or Paste for framework)
Some workable framework (either Python or Rails based) with Amazon Web Services for messaging and persistence
Google App Engine

The standard model would obviously get me up and running the fastest, but I'm really wanting to do some serious work with these dynamic-schema databases (which all of the other choices use). It's always good when you can learn something new while building something useful, so I've been leaning away from #1. Both #2 and #3 are doable, but Google App Engine promised the best of most worlds...dynamic models, etc., plus a framework that I'm very familiar with (supports Python, and includes a hunk of Django templating and such). Plus, it's the new toy on the block; I'm all about new toys at home! (at work, I'm a production DBA, so I do the pushback thing when new toys show up. DBAs are generally horribly conservative when it comes to new tech and implementation. It's not that we're just cranky, though (though that helps). It's because when it breaks, WE get to keep both pieces, and put them back together, no matter who broke them! But trust me, dev types...I understand the attraction. *grin*)

So I've been wanting to choose GAE pretty badly. Problem is...I didn't make it into the first 10,000 invites. Probably by a long shot; I didn't hear about it for about 24 hours for some bizarre reason. So there's some indeterminate amount of time that I have to wait until I could actually publish anything to the world. Note: doesn't stop development; I've already downloaded and started working the the App Engine SDK. But the prospect of no firm date for deployment made me reluctantly push App Engine to the bottom of the pile.

While I was making that decision, I wasn't reading my GMail, though. I got my invite yesterday!! Google App Engine...front and center! I'm hip deep in the docs now, and hope to have something usable fairly soon. And since Google's doing the admin heavy lifting, I can leave my DBA hat at the day office. Yay! Updates soon, true believers.

May 19, 2008 permalink | Comments (0)

ken.feed before friendfeed

So...I haven't jumped on the latest geek bandwagon yet, friendfeed. Well...to be honest, I did go ahead and grab my namespace, but no subscriptions yet. And that's because I resist the model. I like aggregation...but I don't like delegating that unconditionally to an external service. I want to have control of my data, and control of my URIs, when possible. I learned this the hard way with earlier services, so I've been trying to determine the best way forward.

So the heck with it; I'm creating my own uber-feed. Planet Ken! I'm using the Planet framework; instead of aggregating a bunch of users of a project (Python, Debian, etc.), I'm instead aggregating my own feeds...my blog, twitterstream, flickrstream, etc. And then I'll import that into friendfeed, to close the loop. But if they fold...I'm still around. Yeah, baby!

Don't get me wrong...I may have a control issue here *grin*, and I realize there are things that friendfeed can do that my Planet can't. (reputation, commenting, etc.) But that's simply where we are today; I think those things also can potentially be distributed. I think that's a good idea. But I can't work on that without having a decoupled feed to start with, so it's worthwhile.

Both Atom and RSS2.0 are of course available, as well as the straight-up page. I have no idea how this experiment will go, so please drop me a line if you have any comments. Thanks!

May 19, 2008 permalink | Comments (0)

...and don't forget Peter Watts' Starfish

Yoikes! I neglected to mention Starfish, by the absolutely incomparable Peter Watts in my earlier recommendations post. I read Starfish some time ago as an ebook available (along with most of the rest of his backlist) directly from Watts himself. He does this beause he rocks, and he wants to make you into the sort of Watts fanboy I am. *grin*.

Be warned. Starfish is terrific science fiction, but it is...um....well...dark. Seriously. But it succeeds in doing what SF is supposed to do;it uses the premise and extrapolations to pose questions about us. About what we do to ourselves, about how society values us (and our failings), and about just how twisted and far we might fall if we don't stop and think about what we're doing. It's a distressing read at times, but it's so, so worth it. If you're local, just ask and I'll be happy to let you borrow it.

May 15, 2008 permalink | Comments (0)

Today's recs: Skinny Puppy and Beyond Good and Evil

Oh, happy day! Noted two great purchases today. Amie Street now has just about everything from Skinny Puppy available. Get it while it's hot...albums are around $2-4 dollars each right now! And Steam has released Beyond Good and Evil for $9.99 (in fact, $8.99 right now). It's a great, award-winning action game from 2003 that never had very much commercial success. I've never owned it, though I've played it partway through on console rental and enjoyed it. On the list now, though! Yeah!!

May 15, 2008 permalink | Comments (0)

Politics and religion on FORA.tv

Catching up on my email and my subscriptions this morning, and I seem to be almost always presently surprised when I'm kicking the tires over at FORA.tv. There is SO MUCH good stuff over there; it's really impressive. Here's a clip from Randall Balmer on empty campaign promises in Presidential politics, from the full program Votes, Values and Religion Go to the Primaries. I've bookmarked the full program in MyFORA library to go back and view later.

One could honestly do a lot worse than just hanging out on FORA.tv for all your video (online and otherwise). The breadth of content is overwhelming!

May 11, 2008 permalink | Comments (0)

KAZ: Episode 26

Here is the blip.tv page (with embedded player; just click through to listen), and direct MP3 download link for the May 9th episode.

I discuss Evernote, LibraryThing, data portability, and sharing. Thanks to Jon Udell for making some great podcasts that helped me realize that I could improve the way I organize and share some of my data.

Note: I used The Levelator for the first time on this podcast, and I definitely think you can hear the difference! (This one was also done at the desk rather than on portable recorder, so it's about as good as they'll ever get, quality-wise).

May 9, 2008 permalink | Comments (0)

AppDrop clones AppSpot

Sweet! JChris of Grabb.it has already wired up an alternate implementation of Google App Engine. You can apparently with little to no effort take an AppSpot (Google App Engine's hosting site) application, and instead upload it to AppDrop, which runs in Amazon's EC2 cloud infrastructure. Very nice!

It's pretty quick and dirty, so I expect that it's as much proof of concept that AppSpot isn't making lock-in inevitable as anything else...but regardless, it's still a great development. And the speed at which it occurred suggests to me it won't be the last implementation...

May 9, 2008 permalink | Comments (0)

history meme

Hey, all the cool kids are doing it.

kkennedy@huginn:~$ history | awk '{a[$2]++}END{for(i in a){print a[i] " " i}}' | sort -rn | head
114 mutt
84 exit
53 ls
29 cd
28 less
27 emacs
16 su
16 python
15 gpg
13 man
kkennedy@huginn:~$

May 8, 2008 permalink | Comments (0)

PostgreSQL: I made a good pick

Long ago, I reviewed the various free software database-y apps, and made a decision to be more interested in PostgreSQL than MySQL. Don't get me wrong...I have and do use MySQL when required, or when it's just more readily available. But my own development, and the (very) minor code review of the actual dbms source, all focuses on PostgreSQL as my RDBMS.

Among all the flamewars on features, speed, security, and such, licensing has always been an issue between PostgreSQL and MySQL as well. *nerd alert; sorry* PostgreSQL uses the BSD license, which doesn't require sharing of changes made to code that you distribute, but in practice, most people do just contribute back to the main tree. And they usually maintain their copyright, so the PostgreSQL source has many owners. MySQL has always used the GPL (good show), but they require contributors to the main distribution to to sign the copyright on their code over to MySQL's corporation. That way, the code base has only one person (well, corporation) that is the copyright holder of the primary distribution. Which is clean, and some people like that. It also makes it easier to sell, though...which is what happened when Sun bought MySQL recently.

That's not necessarily bad, but I don't like this: MySQL reserves features for paying customers; open-source community up in arms. This bears watching to see how it plays out, but I see this as short-sighted. The Enterprise features will get FAR less testing that the primary codebase, it'll be difficult to coordinate code that crosses the barrier, etc. It sounds like a good idea to pointy-headed business types; I don't think it is. Just free the whole damn thing, and charge for support as you will, IMO. I think this could hurt MySQL some. It'll take more missteps to move most folks, but this is a warning flag.

For me? I'm glad I've stuck with PostgreSQL over the years. It's the bazaar, not the cathedral, and that's where I like to be. It's a powerful, advanced, free RDBMS, and I love it dearly.

Note: I just realized that the licensing hyperlink I used above kind of makes it appear that I'm bolding free, and contrasting that with MySQL or something. Absolutely not; MySQL was and is still free software, in fact under a license (GPLv2) that the GNU Foundation (target of the aforementioned link) invented. That wasn't my intent with the link. I just like the GNU Foundation, hadn't linked to them in awhile, and knew they had a list of Free Software licenses. That is all.

UPDATE (5/7): MySQL reverses decision on this. Good call.

May 3, 2008 permalink | Comments (0)

KAZ: Episode 25

Here is the blip.tv page (with embedded player; just click through to listen), and direct MP3 download link for the April 29th episode.

It's a quickie. I welcome myself back *grin*, then chat about our recent vacation and the books I'm reading

May 2, 2008 permalink | Comments (0)

Another good day for mymedia

Yesterday was another excellent podcast/book combo day, and it's all Cory Doctorow, all the time. I'm listening to a podcast of his collaborative novella, "True Names" (co-written with Benjamin Rosenbaum)...it rocks!! I'm up to Part 6 or 7, (Ben and Cory take turns reading), and it's quite excellent. Really out there...it's a galaxy-spanning story of artificial intelligences competing for resources on multiple levels of reality; and a love story to boot! *grin*

And on the book front...can I have a "hell yeah"!!? Little Brother is out, and my copy is already in my hands, thanks to my Amazon pre-order. I'm about halfway finished, and it is EXCELLENT. Neil Gaiman's comments pretty much say it all, including "...But I'd recommend Little Brother over pretty much any book I've read this year, and I'd want to get it into the hands of as many smart 13 year olds, male and female, as I can."

But I might as well throw in my own thoughts, I suppose. *wink* It's Orwell's "1984" meets Stephenson's "Cryptomomicon" meets the young adult stories I remember and loved like "The Three Investigators". The near-future plot revolves around a group of high school students mistakenly held for military-style interrogation after a terrorist attack in San Francisco. When they're freed, they discover that the Department of Homeland Security has used the event as an excuse for a massive surveillance crackdown in the Bay area, and they chronicle the resultant affect on civil liberties, freedom, and free speech. Then they fight back, with all the powers next-gen l33t hacker kids can muster. It's fun, insightful, timely, and it's Doctorow's best work yet. It's sold as "Young Adult" fiction, so don't look in the SF section.

In addition, Cory's standard Creative Commons freely-distributable etext will be available in the next few days (Cory's on vacation right now), and the DRM-free audiobook is already available for purchase. Cory walks the walk, and it's much appreciated. The ebook will grace my N770 along with all his other work as soon as it's available.

Thanks to Cory and Ben for the great, great stories.

It's mine!!

Get the audiobook....

May 1, 2008 permalink | Comments (0)

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