Category — technical-ity

NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no NO no 

STUPID stupid STUPID stupid STUPID stupid STUPID stupid STUPID stupid STUPID STUPID stupid STUPID stupid STUPID stupid STUPID stupid STUPID stupid STUPID STUPID stupid STUPID stupid STUPID stupid STUPID stupid STUPID stupid STUPID STUPID stupid STUPID stupid STUPID stupid STUPID stupid STUPID stupid STUPID STUPID stupid STUPID stupid STUPID stupid STUPID stupid STUPID stupid STUPID STUPID stupid STUPID stupid STUPID stupid STUPID stupid STUPID stupid STUPID STUPID stupid STUPID stupid STUPID stupid STUPID stupid STUPID stupid STUPID STUPID stupid STUPID stupid STUPID stupid STUPID stupid STUPID stupid STUPID STUPID stupid STUPID stupid STUPID stupid STUPID stupid STUPID stupid STUPID STUPID stupid STUPID stupid STUPID stupid STUPID stupid STUPID stupid STUPID STUPID stupid STUPID stupid STUPID stupid STUPID stupid STUPID stupid STUPID STUPID stupid STUPID stupid STUPID stupid STUPID stupid STUPID stupid STUPID STUPID stupid STUPID stupid STUPID stupid STUPID stupid STUPID stupid STUPID STUPID stupid STUPID stupid STUPID stupid STUPID stupid STUPID stupid STUPID STUPID stupid STUPID stupid STUPID stupid STUPID stupid STUPID stupid STUPID STUPID stupid STUPID stupid STUPID stupid STUPID stupid STUPID stupid STUPID STUPID stupid STUPID stupid STUPID stupid STUPID stupid STUPID stupid STUPID STUPID stupid STUPID stupid STUPID stupid STUPID stupid STUPID stupid STUPID STUPID *DUMB*

…And I imagine that that, in combination with what you're seeing everywhere else today, is Nuff Said, yeah?

(If not, poke me via any means and I'll happily elucidate the NO and the STUPID as much as you like.)

[[one last big FACEPALM for the government of the country that built the Internet, for being too bought-and-paid-for to bother even understanding the basics of how not to break it.  *SHEESH*]]

…Of course you do.  But just in case you don't, or haven't been motivated enough to do anything about it, here's a lovely little metaphor to hammer it home.

(You know why corporations have more freedoms than you do?  Because they're fighting for theirs.)

So now there's Google+, in addition to my site, LJ, Twitter, and some other places I don't publicly advertise I'm at — and now, thanks to Google being far more awesome at interoperability than just about anybody else, it feels like things are bound to get confusing.  On the other hand, I can remember feeling that way in 2004 when I signed up for LiveJournal, too…I was like, "What, this AND Usenet??"  And things have gone ok since then.  I suppose I should just stick to my principles which, when it comes to technology, generally amount to "Chill out, it's just people and it's not, on balance, scarier or weirder than anything else people do."

Sure, things like OpenPCR (WOOT), Bitcoins (meh), and a Roomba that mops (Are you frakking kidding me?) can make it seem like the 21st century is the Boston Molasses Flood writ large and grey…but that's just our adrenal glands talking, and it's a hard fast rule out here that Thou Shalt Keep The Lizard Brain Off The Internet. 

Don't stop here, Yoshi, this is Cerebrum Country.

Yesterday I went really swimming in the ocean for the first time in my life.  I've sploshed around in ocean waves twice before, but this time there was wet gear and snorkels and fins and my job was to keep up with two spearfishers while we trucked a really long way out to an island, which it turned out the surf was too hairy to stop and rest on, and then a really long way back, all in crazy current and way more waves than I was ready for.  I definitely confirmed that I'm in the best shape of my life by, you know, not dying — I actually kept up pretty well, all told.  And it was beautiful and amazing and terrifying and I've never been so happy to reach land in my life and my legs are trashed today, and I'm totally gonna do it again. 

…I also learned from this that there's a big fat line between exercise you can keep a polyphasic schedule through (my usual kungfu & weightlifting) and exercise you NEED to pass out after.  Even though I took 2 naps between getting home and bedtime, I passed out — I mean out — about 11pm last night and didn't crack an eyelid until 8am.  I suspect this has more to do with how much more exercise I got than usual, than the objective amount of exercise; but of course that's just me guessing.

Peace, ya'll, and enjoy your weekends!

First off, Woohoo my uploading problem is fixed!  I owe huge thanks to Nicky at Tumble Design for this — I would never have sussed out that PHP error on my own, and Nicky did it for nothing…Thanks again!

(For the curious, my hosting ops needed to set the 'upload_tmp_dir' setting in the PHP Configuration to '/tmp'; it was unspecified, and that was causing WordPress to not find files for uploading.)

I've only got seconds before I need to run off to work (again!…sometimes it feels like I've discovered the Ubersleep of Work (UberWork?! Augh!) where it's just one long rolling…thing…  ;)  …But if nothing else, I wanted to post this, FINALLY, because come on, it's SO COOL that someone translated the Ubersleep book into Russian, and now I can finally post it!!

(Thanks tons to M Ken for the translation!)

UBERSLEEP in Russian

OK, computer question for you all.

(Yes, I'm a computer nerd, and a pretty high-up one — my work involves large virtualized highly-available networks — but as you know if you know other professional nerds, that doesn't mean we don't ask for help; in fact it often means we don't have the time to do the kind of futzing around with things that fixes simple problems, and we rely on other nerds to help us out when that happens.  Heck, I just asked my boss the other day to recommend a simple media server setup, so I wouldn't have to read up on media servers as I'm way out of date on it. ;)

This blog is a bit broken.  I like the theme & the format, and I've enjoyed using WordPress all this time, but the little problems are now adding up to the point where I can't keep ignoring them if I'm to keep using this blog.

My biggest complaint is that the media library has never worked quite right; and a while ago it stopped letting me link to anything that I uploaded there, so if I want to post pictures or files, they have to be up on another site first.  I've upgraded to the latest WP version about five times hoping that that would improve things, but it doesn't seem to.  The forums don't seem to have an answer for what my problem is — things either appear in the library and when I link to them, the link just doesn't work (i.e. pictures are just the box with the X in the corner); or sometimes, more recently, I get an error that a file I want to upload to the library is "invalid", and it won't show up in the library at all.  My hosting providers are awesome and they assure me it's not their fault — and I see no evidence that it is — but if the problem is with WordPress, I've been unable in several months of on-and-off troubleshooting to suss it out.

Babblicious I am, and this site is fine for general blather, but a website that can't serve any files is not enough use to me to justify the cost of keeping it running.  I don't intend to get RID of having a blog, for sure; but it looks like I may need to move or in some other way reinvent this one to get it working properly.  Er, and I need that to not be the world's most intense process, please — I can in fact write some web code, but again, no time.  Anything that requires more than HTML-level formatting from me is costing me more in time than it's worth; or to put it another way, the point at which I have to do CSS is the point at which it makes more sense for me fiscally to pay someone else to do it, and I don't want to do that either.  It feels like what I want in a site is simple enough that paying for it shouldn't be necessary, yes?

So, I'm looking for suggestions, and thank you in advance if you have any.  I have plans that will rapidly make this site unsuitable in the next few months, so I'm looking to make a decision about which direction to go with it relatively soon.

Thanks!

PD

Once again — and I'm sure this will deeply shock everyone — I'm waaaay behind on the polyphasic-related email I've been receiving, so if I owe you an email, it's totally my fault…again. 

In my own defense, I'm adjusting to a crazy hard job during an utterly crazy time at the company; I have a lot of responsibility and a lot to prove; and I have to move across the country in, like, a month.  So add moving and traveling 800 miles every couple weeks to apartment-hunt to 80-hour weeks with nights and weekends and, well, that's me. 

Seriously, I have neglected to email my mom more than once.  Don't feel shunned.  ;)

However, it's fascinating to me that I'm now living the exact pseudo-monophasic modern Western sleep schedule that I've railed about for years.  I stay up too late; I get 4-6 hours most nights; sometimes 7; some weekend day if I can I'll sleep 9 or 10 and feel groggy but oddly refreshed afterwards.  I'm exquisitely dependent on a good dose of daily caffeine; I'm starting to have to fight gravitating towards energy drinks.

I *am* that professional nerd.  And I am the worst sleeper ever; and for the moment, I really can't avoid it.  

The only reason this isn't upsetting in the extreme is that I've determined, for sure, that my job will be cool about letting me get a nap in.  There's still the commute and other details to iron out, but that's promising enough that I'm willing to use it as an excuse to not panic.  I may just be too busy, and too out-and-about-with-no-car, to pull off Uberman; I've accepted that.  But Everyman 3 — one of the great loves of my life — looks very darn likely again in the near future.  

THANK.  GOODNESS.  I hate sleeping and I hate being tired, and I've been doing more of both the last few months than I ever did while I was polyphasic.  Ew ew ew.  …Still, it is a heck of an experiential opportunity, to try the typical, horrible (I-M-increasingly-justified-O) sleep schedule that the typical overworked slob in my socioeconomic arena keeps…I suspect I'll be glad to have learned this, later on.

Before I go, I want to say thank you to everyone who's been emailing me — there have been quite a lot lately! — I do enjoy your stories, questions and comments, even when I can't get back to you promptly.  Thanks so much for taking the time to fill me in.

PD 

Fifteen years of draconian copyright regimes show that when you create powerful enforcement tools without any consequence for misuse, they get misused. And half a century’s worth of evidence on digital technology shows that no amount of enforcement will make computers and the internet worse at copying. Hard drives won’t get magically bulkier and more expensive. Networks won’t get less accessible, slower and harder to use. General technological literacy won’t decline. If you want copying to stop, physics is not on your side.

–via Denying physics won’t save the video stars | Cory Doctorow – Times Online.

Good article, good facts, catchy headline — what more could you ask for? Oh yeah, a kickass author to write it. If you haven’t read his amazing YA novel "Little Brother ", or checked out the free online serialization of his new (also kickass, I think) novel "Makers", well, now you have the tools to do so, dontcha? ;)

Welcome to a Massive Dump of The Interesting, wherein I finally close some of the browser-windows.  (Yes, this is what you get when I go out of town for a few days.  Just roll with it.)

“Were a lot of people reckless and stupid? Of course! But that cannot explain why the whole system crashed, since a lot of people are always reckless and stupid.”

– From appellate judge & law lecturer Richard Posner’s book “A Failure of Capitalism: The Crisis of ’08 and the Descent into Depression“, NYT review, via Angel Station.

(Sounds interesting, doesn’t it?  I never have time for reading like this, but that doesn’t stop me from wishing we could invent Osmosis Rigs so I could just upload the stuff already.  ;)

Also, I really want Dave McKean’s “Mythical Creatures” stamps, even though they’re British stamps and I hardly ever send dead-tree-mail anyway.  They’re just…really pretty.

Not so pretty but darn potent and good for a long hard think is the “Technology Bill of Rights“.  Whatever you think of the details as they’ve got them there, you can’t argue that something like this is needed, I think.

John Scalzi’s “Interview with a Stick of Butter” made me laugh in the damn-you-I-spit-coffee-but-somehow-can’t-find-it-in-myself-to-be-angry-at-you kind of way.  This kind of small genius is why writers rule, not just as vehicles for blah-blah-blah, but as examples of humanity.  Yay, human weirdness!

Also, this find…this is A FIND, I think.  It’s an old book called “Picture Stories of the Sex Life of Man and Woman”, and you can read all about it (if you can stand the hilarity) here.  It contains many…er, wonderful…pictures such as this one:

…Yesssss, sure.  Okay.  *har!*

Also, just in case I haven’t posted it before, this site contains professional, beautiful, amazing pictures of the “ruins of Detroit”.  Totally worth a look if you like the aesthetic.

Lastly, a Shaolin Monk’s idea of a “stretching routine” will turn your whole body to softened butter and pain.  Still, it seems to be definitely working…more on the program when I’m a little further in.

Have a wonderful day all — and have a nice nap(s)!

Here you go, people:  a full-on lapse of the Taoist calm as I struggle with

Why Americans ACTUALLY Don’t Have Cheap, Fast Internet

There are a lot of theories about this.  I’m here to talk about the big central truth behind all the right theories.  The core of it; the main point; the real problem.

Simply, it’s because Major internet-providing companies are getting governments to pass laws making it illegal for anyone to beat their prices.

NO I AM NOT KIDDING. READ THAT AGAIN.

Here’s the deal: In a few states, people have successfully gotten together and formed some type of community organization to provide Internet access.  They didn’t do it for fun — they did it because the deal they were getting from the major providers sucked, with really slow speeds and high prices, and they got sick of it.  This actually happened in the city next door to me, when a local muni-fi project was shut down by lawsuit from Comcast (I think it was Comcast).  The non-tax-funded company in North Carolina that the article above talks about built their own fiber network for a city of 74,000 people.  They were able to provide WAY faster internet than the local BigCo (Time Warner in this case), and at much cheaper prices – something like the kind of deals people have in OTHER COUNTRIES but NOT IN THE USA.

Ah, The USA.

Where we’re all advanced and innovative and democratic, as long as the innovation and democracy come from, you know, the right sort of people.  As long as it doesn’t come from groups of individuals working together to better themselves and their communities.

No, we’re only allowed to have as much innovation and democracy as a certain class of people tell us we can. They will control our government for their financial benefit, and we’ll buy what they have to offer whether we like it or not. If we create our own companies to compete with them, or just flip them off and decide to do it ourselves, us and our neighbors and screw them – if we exercise our “right to vote with our wallets” — then they’ll do everything they can to shut us down.

Am I being strident enough about this yet? Because I really don’t think a topic like this can be strident enough. I don’t want to live in a fucking corporatocracy like in some sick science fiction future, okay? And I know enough about science fiction that I don’t think I’m fucking crying chicken when it’s real actual giant corporations really actually wielding the government as a tool of repression and control to the point where citizen groups that can accomplish things for cheaper than the corporations want to sell us get shut down by their own legislators.

Here, just to spark some outrage (because that is what good stridency does), have some real live example numbers:

(Click “Read More” and prepare to say “Holy Sh!t”)

[Read more →]

Yes indeedy.

PowerNap plan could save 75 percent of data center energy | Science Blog.