Category: Technology

All things geeky.

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The New Phones Are Here

Motorola Razr v3xx

Our Motorola v400 phones were cutting edge when Cathy, Sarah and I got them. We have been holding out for the v600s because we wanted the ability to film video but the v600 was too troubled and we could not wait for its release. Good fortune shone on us for the v400s were great phones lasting longer than any of our previous cell phones! The v400s are notorious for slowly becoming harder to hear over time. The connection on the speaker corrodes. The mouths of babes who like to eat phones do not help. Additionally the microphone slowly dies.

I signed up with Bellsouth Mobility DCS in October or November of 1997 because I needed to take credit card numbers over the phone and DCS was the only digital option and dropped calls was the norm not the exception. I personally knew someone that took great pleasure in scanning analog phone signals and recording tidbits of spied information; digital was essential. There were parts of town I would avoid simply to not lose a call. At one point on Northshore I could tell my callers "I’ll be back in 30 feet" My original Motorola cellular phone was huge! The sim card was the size of a credit card and it claimed that I was one of the first 100 DCS customers (I don’t believe that).

So after extending the life of our v400 phones as far as I could, yes, I repaired them by removing the corrosion, they finally have met their end. Cingular, the new AT&T, had an awesome deal that ends tomorrow so Cathy, Sarah and I each ended up with the new Motorola RAZR v3xx phones. So far these have been wonderful! It is so nice to be able to hear people again. I had a Bluetooth headset years ago and I have missed it. I like my Bluetooth headset. These phones make videos and can send the video directly to Youtube! The camera is a 1.3 megapixel instead of a vga camera so the pictures sent to Flickr should look better.

The one BIG technical issue! I have a grandfathered feature with Cingular called Alternate Line Service. That means, I get a service that they do not sell anymore. It is a beautiful service and why they do not sell it is beyond me. I have to assume they lose money or too many cellular towers do not support the feature. I have 2 phone numbers each with their own voicemail box that come to one cell phone. Line 1 is my personal/private number that for the longest time I gave only to close friends and family. Line 2 is my business number 865-382-3080 which the world can have. ( for Google’s sake you might also see that as (865) 382-3080 or +18653823080 ) Line 1 rings The Pink Panther; line 2 rings Mission Impossible. The documentation for the Motorola RAZR v3xx mentions multiple lines so I know the phone supports it. Cingular technical support claims the account is setup correctly. Now it is up to be to figure out how to configure the phone. Right now I am at a loss and seriously considering reducing my phone down to a single line. One customer service rep went so far as to say that the next time I upgrade our phone plan that they will request I drop the alternate line service anyway. I’d like to get the alternate line service working for another month and over that month let people know which number I’ll be using.

I am really impressed with the v3xx phone!

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Linux is great, except…

I have really enjoyed working with Ubuntu’s desktop environment for Noah’s computer. I am really wanting to setup the same for me. One of my client’s uses RedHat for one of their servers and it is equally impressive. But not without headaches. Granted, Windows has its share of troubleshooting but usually it is a bizarre situation. In my case, I have successfully installed a very common version control system called Subversion aka SVN. I am thrilled with SVN’s functionality and its integration with Dreamweaver.

Now the icing on the cake is to get some sort of ticket system working for the client so that in their two projects change requests, bugs (evil word!), documentation, etc can be tracked. The hot to trot open source software (OSS) right now is Trac and it is supposed to integrate with SVN. I have it almost working. Seems I failed to get the svn-python bindings in place. Every tech document and online chatroom replies to my issue as "sounds like your subversion python bindings aren’t working" but no one cares to elaborate. I’ve scratched a part of my head bald trying to figure this out! Unfortunately, it has also distracted me from my main goal for the client but once the ticket system is in place, they will be thrilled and piles of sticky notes can go away. Until then, they will see it as misdirected time I am sure. Establishing process and procedure in a company is always an uphill battle.

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A peek into my technical life

I returned from the Okefenokee slightly sunburned and somewhat sore (review to follow later). Yesterday I had the pleasure of dabbling more with Subversion (SVN) including its integration with DreamWeaver via a free plugin and Tortoise SVN. I am digging it! I am not sold on Trac yet but am going ahead with a multiple project Trac installation since it ties into SVN.

Today I have the pleasure of finishing soldering a power plug onto a Toshiba M35X laptop. I should have finished last night! It had to be totally disassembled. Apparently Toshiba lost a class action against them over badly designed power plug. See also, also, and also.

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I finally listened to my own advice regarding meaningful domain names

For those wanting to cut to the chase, the last paragraph explains that you can now read my blog at http://realityme.net/ with post feeds at http://realityme.net/feed/ and comment feeds at http://realityme.net/comments/feed/. The http://blog.siliconholler.com/ links also still work.

Client: "My email address is irunmyownbusiness@aol.com."
Doug, long sigh once again pondering why he hasn’t written this down: *gives viral marketing speech* *gives who controls your business speech*

The viral marketing speech goes something like this: Every time you send an email you are sending an advertisement for whoever is on the right side of the @ symbol in the email address. That means irunmyownbusiness@aol.com is advertising America Online with every email sent. Even non-techies and computerphobes know they can decompose an email address from irunmyownbusiness@aol.com to http://www.aol.com/ to see the business’ website. Instead, this person should buy the domain http://irunmyownbusiness.com/ (domain names are cheap now-a-days: $5.99/yr).

Who controls your business? You should but when you are irunmyownbusiness@aol.com you are letting AOL control your business. If you quit using AOL and relied solely upon Comcast your email address would change from irunmyownbusiness@aol.com to irunmyownbusiness@comcast.net. Nothing sent to irunmyownbusiness@aol.com would forward to irunmyownbusiness@comcast.net. Instead the mail would bounce (get returned to the sender) and your customers would go elsewhere. If AOL’s mail servers have problems, you cannot do anything. If you own your own domain like http://irunmyownbusiness.com/ then you can create as many email addresses as your hosting plan permits (usually in the thousands). So you can have sales@irunmyownbusiness.com and support@irunmyownbusiness.com and so forth. If your host (the company you rent computer space from and houses your domain) starts having problems you can move to a different webhost and your clients will never know because the client/user looks at irunmyownbusiness.com regardless of which computer serves that domain’s website and email.

More on who controls your business? If you have a domain name, then you can rent some server space (this is called hosting) and setup a website, email addresses, and more. However, instead of spending the $5.99/yr plus hosting fees for http://irunmyownbusiness.com/ many people choose to go with free services like http://korrnet.org/ (now wisely using a better domain name http://discoveret.org/). These free services often put your domain as a tertiary domain to theirs so you become http://irunmyownbusiness.korrnet.org/ which means that at any point in time if korrnet.org goes out of business or changes their domain name that your business suffers. Same thing with services that provide you a domain name as http://discoveret.org/irunmyownbusiness. You are not in control and you are advertising their business.

Let’s talk advertising. Your domain name should be everywhere! It should be on your business cards. It should be in your voicemail greeting. When you shake someone’s hand you should declare "My domain is irunmyownbusiness.com!" It should be on your letter head (you do still send letters right?) and it should be in the email signature of every email you send (in addition to being part of the email address). It should be on your billboards and in your print and television ads. Put it everywhere! Tattoo it on your forehead. Now let’s justify spending the $42 per year by pointing out the savings on printing alone. If you have given out business cards with irunmyownbusiness@aol.com and change to irunmyownbusiness@comcast.net or igotsmart@irunmyownbusiness.com then ALL your old print material is wasted and you have to spend a few hundred dollars reprinting. That business card sitting on someone’s desk for a year has a bad email address and you have lost a potential client. If you had printed on the business card sales@irunmyownbusiness.com and you changed hosting from one webhost to another you do not have to reprint anything and you haven’t lost potential clients!

And a stylistic note. A domain name should not be confusing. http://dashes-and_underscore-makeaconfusingdomainname.com/ Ideally a domain name should be meaningful. http://blog.siliconholler.com/ does not relate to Reality Me. That said, meaningful domain names are sometimes hard to come by. A squatter has http://realityme.com/ for instance. http://www.mccaughan.com/ is not me or any of my family to the best of my knowledge. So, when a meaningful name cannot be acquired, get a memorable name.

It pains me to see people using access provider email addresses such as irunmyownbusiness@aol.com and irunmyownbusiness@comcast.net to represent themselves professionally. There is so much benefit that can be had from your own domain name for $5.99 a year and a cheap hosting plan around $2.99 per month. For those slow on the math that $41.87 per year (probably tax deductible).

And on following my own advice? I own http://siliconholler.com/ and set my blog up as http://blog.siliconholler.com/ but this both goes against my own advice and is a confusing domain name. Additionally, it does not match the title of my blog "Reality Me." So, I finally listened to myself and now have the blog under http://realityme.net/.

I trust 1&1 for domains – Get yours for $5.99 today!





  

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The Earth is growing

In today’s science, a video purports that the Pangaea theory is wrong and that the continents are not being pushed around by the tectonic plates. The video claims the world is growing and it gives a pretty decent argument. There are still questions about how the Earth can grow but keep the same density. Is there any real evidence to support the growing theory? Today the ScienceDaily reported that the Earth’s crust is missing in the middle of the Atlantic.

Scientists have discovered a large area thousands of square kilometres in extent in the middle of the Atlantic where the Earth’s crust appears to be missing. Instead, the mantle – the deep interior of the Earth, normally covered by crust many kilometres thick – is exposed on the seafloor, 3000m below the surface. [Source]

Could this gaping wound be where the Earth has grown and simply not yet reformed the crust? Of course, if the Earth is growing, seems like with today’s technology it would be fairly simple to measure.

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What is legacy code anyway?

Legacy code is software that was written previously by yourself or another developer, left to rot probably undocumented, then after a time brought back to the table as a project to be improved upon.

Code ages. And quickly! Low budget projects tend to be created with little documentation and lots of hacks or workarounds. "This will do for now. We’ll fix it in the next version." Only the developer saying that does not document the need for a fix or revision. This is called firefighting or bandaiding. As time passes techniques or functions that were once hot and vogue become passé and deprecated and sometimes altogether unsupported. One of my recent projects left me scratching my head for a week because the php function session_register() is deprecated and excluded from version php 6.

These legacy apps are also known as evolutionary prototypes. Evolutionary prototypes build features and changes upon the existing functioning application. They have a limited life. After a number of revisions, the application starts to fail miserably. It is like adding more and more plumbing to the house. Eventually you forget what that one pipe does but it exists therefore it must be important. Unfortunately, most clients just see the number of dollars spent building up to the current revision of their application and have trouble justifying the expense of a total rewrite.

Legacy code can be extremely painful to troubleshoot and down right painful to modify since the modifications might mean having to work in the awful practices the previous developer employed rather than using good, professional coding techniques even when the previous developer was yourself. However, most applications will fall into the category of legacy code so a good developer should treat all projects, even the small and under budgeted, as ongoing large scale applications with appropriate documentation of assumptions, explanations of hacks and workarounds, suggestions for future updates, test documents, and so forth. Clients should plan on a total rewrite after 3-7 evolutions.

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And they call themselves programmers…

Coding Horror by Jeff Atwood made me cry today. I wanted to laugh but it was so painful all I could do is shake my head and cry. Two days ago he made a very good post asking "Why can’t programmers.. Program?" He referenced Imran on Tech who uses a simple problem to figure out if his prospective candidates can code. Imran also has good tastes in WordPress themes. One of Imran’s test questions:

Write a program that prints the numbers from 1 to 100. But for multiples of three print “Fizz” instead of the number and for the multiples of five print “Buzz”. For numbers which are multiples of both three and five print “FizzBuzz”. [Source]

The result was programming types completely missing the point of his post. The tears come in the comments. The first commenter rushed to get his solution to the problem before anyone else. Naturally, many other commenters followed with solutions in different languages or varying degrees of optimization. Why did I cry? Almost every solution has an error!

I also like the debate between the academics and the professionals about recursion. And yes, my view is that recursion belongs in academia and rarely (if ever) in commercial software.

Sadly, it appears that indeed programmers cannot program and, better yet, they cannot even read for comprehension!

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And it streaked across the sky…

Last night Tommy and I had a great pleasure. We saw a shooting star and this wasn’t one of those tiny thin lines way up in the sky. This was a streaking fireball that at first I thought it to be a low flying helicopter as the light seemed to just appear but then it grew brighter and formed a tail then burned in a green ball. It was wicked!

I have seen tiny shooting stars before but this is only the second time in my life I have seen one so close. The first time I was lying on the ground by a bonfire in south Knoxville and a smoky rock streaked from horizon to horizon so low that it seemed like I could have thrown something at it. I swear I could distinguish pockmarks as it flew overhead. Tonight’s was different and very cool.

This happened a few minutes before 9pm EST (2am UTC). Anyone else see it?

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Let me tell you about Boston

The Terrorists Won

On September 11, 2001 terrorists (for the conspiracy minded, domestic; for all others, foreign) set out to change the lifestyle of the American people. Now we send people to prison for half their lives (5 years per count times 9 counts) over a little non-permanent, vandalism.

Mayor Menino said, "It is outrageous, in a post 9/11 world, that a company would use this type of marketing scheme. I am prepared to take any and all legal action against Turner Broadcasting and its affiliates for any and all expenses incurred during the response to today’s incidents. …" [Source]

I’m sorry. If you are that stupid, maybe you should not be mayor! Fear mongering over something harmless is an outrage. The threat of terrorism today is not that much different than it was in the 1970s. (modern international terrorism started in 1968)

Terrorism has not changed since the 70s

Although the terrorist threat was known and understood in the 1990s, spending on national security went down during that decade, which affected both counterterrorism and intelligence. With limited resources, there were other intelligence failures, such as the sarin gas attacks in Japan. At the time of the attack, the Aum Shinrikyo cult was “simply not on the radar” because there were not enough intelligence analysts to research potential Asian terrorism. [Source]

So instead of bringing down the iron curtain…

"Why are you travelling so often to Canada?" the tough U.S. border guard barked. I was on Amtrak, going from New York to Montreal, as I’d done dozen of times before over several decades. This was my first experience (summer 2006) of the increasingly standard and intrusive "U.S. Exit Interviews" on trains crossing the border. Source

…and making American’s prisoners on their own soil, shreading the Constitution, hassling people instead of being nice, wasting time and money on useless security tactics (at the airports) for the sake of show, and stealing away the freedoms that have made this country great, we should be giving the intelligence community more analysts and resources to do their job (and their job is NOT to randomly stop teenagers in Maine).

Summary

Blindly following our leaders, not protesting for our rights, couch potato voting, forgetting to love our neighbors, and simply neglecting to use common sense has radically changed the American lifestyle. The terrorists won! And unless the American people stand up and take charge the American way of life will continue to deteriorate until a new revolution comes.

The only thing that the employees of Interference Inc should be charged with is littering!

You know. Maybe the people that are running our government are just too old. Perhaps we should change things to be "if you are OVER 35, you cannot hold an elected office." The more I watch and read, the more I am convinced this is no different than the bands that cover telephone poles and sides of buildings with flyers and bumper stickers, or the guys that pull over at an intersection, extend a 20 foot ladder, and put up a sign for their yard cleaning service, except that these signs had blinky lights.

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