Technical Journal Travel Log
Mar
9
2010
I’m completely speechless. I am seeing something I never thought I would see. It’s like a dream – an amazing, unbelievable dream.
Steam Comes to Mac, Offers Cross-Platform Gaming Free of Charge – Steam mac – Gizmodo.
Mar
2
2010
Tag Cloud, March 2, 2010
On the border of this page is a “tag cloud” (assuming you are not reading this so far in the future I’ve abandoned maintaining it). As I post articles, I “tag” them with words and phrases that help index them.
The concept is to only show the most frequently used tags, and to use a larger font based on frequency so that tags that are used the most are more prominently displayed. It is a data visualization tool that allows you to quickly comprehend the topics most common on the site.
For a while, the cloud was kind of humorous as there wasn’t enough data to have any accurate conclusions drawn. It’s starting to be a little more accurate about the topics that inspire me to write something in a public space with my name on it.
I captured the current state because I’m curious to compare it at some time in the future.
Mar
2
2010
Joel Spolsky, who always writes well and always has something important to say, pushed this out last month and I’m just getting to it now. On the topic of the value of sales in an software organization:
Most of my life I’ve been in organizations where there is the stereotypical tension between engineers and sales. The engineers see their role as essential; their work could be sold without sales. Sales sees their role as essential; there is nothing more important than closing the deal.
They are both right, of course. I’ve been lucky enough to often work with engineers and sales at the same time, and I’ve seen the dynamic but I’ve also seen the value of both. Joel does a great job reducing this topic to a simple explanation that has a ton of value in a few words.
Mar
2
2010
Saw him perform multiple times with Hall & Oates, as well as Saturday Night Live. Most recently, he was with Hall & Oates when we saw them last year. Talented, and a great presence on stage.
T-Bone Wolk Dies From Heart Attack | undercover.com.au, Music, News, Entertainment.
Feb
26
2010
Twitter has introduced “re-tweeting”; an easier mechanism for sending someone else’s “tweet” from your account. In the past you would have had to copy & paste if someone else posted something of interest, which would have been tagged with your account if you didn’t fit in an attribution in your 140 characters.
Re-Tweet Snapshot
Not a bad idea; it’s nice to make sure the originator is mentioned, and its nice to give re-tweets a special status so you recognize them as a resend of someone else’s message. Unfortunately, the presentation leaves a lot to be desired.
As you can see in the example on the right, “LauraRubinchuk” was retweeted by “JoanElevatesRE”. The indication of a “re-tweet” is the little turnaround icon at the start of the post along with the “retweeted by” message at the end. What is nice is that this is differentiated from a cut & paste job, but it takes up more space and is more prominent than an original post. I would have preferred to see the account of the person I’m following so it’s easier to see why I’m seeing the post. Highlighting or a different color would also be nice to recognize the special status of a “re-tweeted” message. As it is, this looks a lot more like spam with all these accounts and faces I don’t know presented like accounts I’m following.
Even worse is the hovering “help” message bringing more attention to this unknown account and obliterating the posts below it. A box that isn’t working in my browser, cannot be removed, and sends me to a message that says I can’t block these re-tweets which I don’t want to see.
If I was a heavy Twitter user I might be more upset about this. However, I only casually use Twitter from time to time because I don’t see any advantage to it over more traditional blogging and RSS readers. I will say that the 140 character limit is a fun exercise to practice writing more concisely.
Feb
21
2010
There has been a lot of news about bed bugs; the bugs seem to be going through some kind of resurgence. We have fallen into a routine of checking for them when in hotels, and because we never saw any nor knew someone who did, it was starting to seem like some kind of paranoia. I have now had my first direct account with the nasty little bugs.
When checking into a hotel (which will remain nameless, as it could happen in any hotel), I went through the ritual of looking under the mattress with a small flashlight I use for travel. The lack of cleanliness first caught my attention – looking under mattresses in hotels is not for the faint of heart. Then I saw movement! I was so surprised I couldn’t quite believe what I was looking at. They were smaller than I expected, and also paler in color than I expected. However, there was definitely a bug problem with the mattress and they were definitely trying to get out of the light as I shined the flashlight around. They didn’t move very quickly.
Now, I’m not a bug expert and perhaps they weren’t really bed bugs. No matter, I wasn’t staying in the room.
While upsetting, the fact is that the class of hotel doesn’t protect you from coming across bed bugs. They are coming in from other guests. And, the hotel staff did immediately move me to another room and mark the room as out of service. I repeated the exercise in the new room and it was much better, so hopefully it is a room-by-room thing and doesn’t take over a whole building. The advice is:
It’s a scary world out there.
Feb
12
2010
Finally, it feels like we’ve dug out of the mountain of snow that fell here in the past week. 26 inches fell last Friday, than more than another 12 inches fell on Tuesday. I know this doesn’t seem like much to someone that lives in Denver or Vermont, but in Washington DC this set the record for most annual snowfall. This is an area where we see snow 4 or 5 times a year, usually just a few inches, and it usually disappears in a day or two as temperatures go back up to the 40s.
I’ve posted some pictures.
Other than muscle soreness from moving tons of snow, we weathered the storm fine. Our power was out about 4 hours; they purposly took us off line so they could fix someone else’s problem. While the house cooled off a bit, that’s not nearly as bad as others who were out for days. And, we’ve been in that boat twice in the past – not good. Our street was plowed, by our neighbors not the county, so we can get out. I was able to work from home, so being out of the office was not much of a hardship.
The region went through its usual insanity as the storms came in. All the milk and toilet paper disappeared from the stores, which lets you know what people really value in life. But, now that its over we have this common bonding experience to trade stories about and the snow does provide a natural beauty when its deep like this to remind us how amazing the world is when you stop long enough to look at it. To help with the stress of future storms, I’m documenting the following tips for survival:
Jan
22
2010
Snugly in my audio canal,
Magic, tiny pieces of plastic,
Connected to little silicon boxes,
Blocking the annoying world – fantastic!
Through thin wires of white,
Protecting my fragile mental pop,
Deflecting barbs of inane prattle,
With powerful shields of ZZ Top
American Idol hushed by The Romantics,
Miles blocks a shrill child’s cry,
Those little speakers do their tricks,
Until my batteries run dry
Jan
22
2010
Wow, been a while since I posted anything. Holidays, work, travel, news, snow, and other distractions of life.
I’ll be catching up, and I have posted some things on the travel journal.
9th sphere website design |
