Archive for the 'whine' Category

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Apple make sportscars

Published on April 5, 2007 in ideas, technical and whine. 5 Comments

A sports-car is something which a lot of people aspire to, but which most people would never buy; spending that kind of money on something which is at least 50% image, and which one would never really use to its full potential (unless one were a racing driver with access to a suitable track) just seems like an extraordinary folly.

But!… says the pleading inner voice, but they’re soooo pretty, and this one goes so fast it boggles the mind! It makes these fabulous sounds, and it imparts such a sense of power…

FoThe Apple of Temptationr those of us who lust less after fast cars, however, there is a precisely equivalent nemesis: Apple. Always they seem to be the coolest, the fastest, the prettiest, and, unfortunately, the most expensive. Even now… *sigh*.

Working from home: Is it sustainable?

Published on March 1, 2007 in whine and work. 8 Comments

Right now, as I write this, I am theoretically ‘working from home’, even though I’m not at home. I’m in Wonthaggi, telecommuting from the study/lounge of the flat that E’s employers have given her while she serves the term of her indenture completes another educational and fulfilling rotation.

I have been advised by various people that Wonthaggi is not a great place to be if you want to do anything, or at least, anything other than farming or surfing. I am looking forward quite eagerly to the challenge of doing anything other than sit in front of this bloody laptop and attempt to work. The phrase stir crazy covers it nicely: this lounge/study is a nicer place in almost any imaginable respect than my office in the city, yet it is also an unspeakably boring place. There’ something intensely perverse about all of this: I don’t generally enjoy chatting with my workmates. What do we have in common besides work? Very little. I don’t enjoy being surrounded by people typing and and talking on the phone or to each other: they disrupt my work and make me twitchy. But, take them all away, and it is literally a matter of seconds before I start to gibber.

This leads me now to question a fundamental life goal that I have long cherished and held dear: The idea that one day I will be able to only work from home.

It’s like I’ve been saving up all this time to buy a car, only to discover that I hate driving. What do I want to do with my career? I know I’m good at system administry, but that road leads to roughly here and then meanders off into management, a future akin to eternity in hell as I see it.

I could have a go at making Trouble into a company, but I fear that I just don’t have the immense metallic gonads necessary to found a real tech startup in this post-dot-com-boom era, nor the large pile of cash that some lucky buggers carried away at the end of that particular free-for-all.

I had many plans, when I was twenty, for what I would have done by the time I was thirty. It never occurred to me that I might need a plan for what to do after I turned thirty. :)

Dictionary

Published on February 6, 2007 in technical, whine and work. 0 Comments

slow adj. to run a needlessly glitzy X application via two layers of ssh tunneled indirection, via an overloaded metropolitan network link, an elderly desktop box acting as a database server and multi-user ssh gateway, and a very noisy dialup connection from Wonthaggi, while a mandatory windows update tries to download a 20MB patch in the background.

Checklist for the ideal PDA

Published on January 8, 2007 in gadget, ideas, technical and whine. 0 Comments

This post is geeky, and it’s all about PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants) such as the Palm Pilot, the Zaurus, or the Pocket PC. This will be geeky: non-geeks may get bored.

Right now, PDAs are in a terrible slump.

Once upon a time, a company called 3com came up with this thing called a Palm Pilot (let us not go so far back as the Newton, for I am ignorant of its glory, knowing it only for its failure). The Palm Pilot was cool: it was a tiny little computer you held in the palm of one hand, and you interacted with it by ‘writing’ on it with a stylus. It was intended to be deliberately low-featured and simple, providing the tools you needed to keep track of your schedule, your memos and your address book, plus maybe a few other simple things. This made it (relatively) cheap.

Later, Microsoft, the company we love to hate, came up with their own competing hardware model and operating system for PDAs, fostering the breed of devices now known as Pocket PCs, among many other names.

This, along with the ongoing need for 3com (later Palm inc.) to make money by selling new gadgets, caused a bit of an arms race (pun intentional). These stylus-based PDAs began acquiring new (expensive) features at a terrible rate. Microsoft coped with this by throwing armies of programmers at the new problems arising from these new devices. The scrawny beast that was PalmOS, however, grew shaky in the extreme at the prospect of things like wireless networking, web-browsing, playing back MP3s while doing everything else, and so forth. Such was the pressure caused by this shakiness that Palm inc. has undergone a long series of personality crises in recent years. These days it is unclear if anyone is really at the helm of the Palm pilot empire anymore, but the fact remains: Palm was cool, and Palm was first. A lot of very cool applications got written for the Palm, and they’re still out there.

Enough history, I miss my point. The point is that this is all fixable. It would not take rocket science to build an ideal PDA today. Here’s how I believe it could be done:

1. Build a new PDA starting with the umpc idea as a template, i.e. use the existing i386-based architecture. Lots of stuff runs on that, and the problems of making it power-efficient like a PDA are already well understood, and largely solved.

2. Put linux on it. Why? Why not? It’s free, and it can be squeezed into embedded platforms just nicely. It has already been done.

3. Give it emulators. This is where I would concentrate the effort if I were a PDA-development firm today: Usefulness is a function of how many good apps there are for your platform. This too, is a wheel that does not require re-invention. If your PDA can run Palm apps, it has a vast library of free tools straight away. Your PDA can do this easily: Palms were slow beasties, and new hardware is very fast. Emulate the PocketPC while you’re at it. If this means embedding a Windows Mobile license, in that particular emulator, so be it. The Pocket PC is a hideous frankenstein’s monster, but the vast majority of modern commercial PDA-apps are being written for it.

4. Don’t be stupid. Right now, at the outset of 2007, the IT industry contains some of the finest minds and the most cunning strategists in the world. Computer hardware and software represent the leading edge in the science of marketing, so why are PDA manufacturers so stupid?

- You need a brand. Palm knew this of old: 95% of the people I know who have ever heard of a PDA refer to all PDAs as “Palms”. Your hardware needs to be in every business magazine on earth, on posters on the side of trams. It needs to have apple-style quirky marketing. It needs to be viral.

- You need a range. The HP/Compaq iPaq range of pocket-PCs might be an example of this, if they weren’t such a higgledy piggledy line-up of nameless one-offs. There is no sequentiality. There is no modularity. Palm today are far worse at this: Seriously guys, three models? One new model every six months or so? And what about back-support? How quickly did the Tungsten T5 become persona non-grata? Why? Oh, and Sharp, wake up and smell the coffee: PDAs do exist in the world outside Japan. If you or someone just siezed the reins, you could expand the existing PDA market by an order of magnitude, and it would all be yours.

- You need a roadmap. Does anyone know? What is the future of PDAs from HP? How about PDAs from Palm? Sharp? It’s not an all-fired mystery: the functionality of a good PDA hasn’t changed all that radically since the Palm 3. Add-ons are how you get your range of similar devices with modular extra features. PC manufacturers can do this in a cyclone with both hands tied behind their backs while whistling dixie. Don’t give me that crap about size being an issue: Mobile phone manufacturers seem to cope, and have you looked at Lenovo‘s line up of laptops lately?

This stuff never fails to astonish me. The PDA market is just so much vastly bigger than the laptop market: only people with desks need laptops. People without desks can still use a PDA just fine. People who have laptops already will spend mind boggling amounts of money to get smaller, lighter ones. Where is the capitalist feeding frenzy? Where is the supply rushing in to fill the demand? What kind of drugs are these people on? Aaaargh!
Manufacturers of the world take note: I am a prototypical english-speaking white male caucasian geek with a good income. My ideal PDA is as follows:

  • Fits in my pocket.
  • Uses a stylus.
  • Runs PalmOS apps.
  • Runs Pocket PC apps.
  • Talks bluetooth to my other gadgets.
  • Is stable as hell.
  • Will be properly supported by the manufacturer for the next three years.

That’s all. It’s not asking a lot, really. All that other stuff (massive storage, phone features, wifi, cameras, proper web browsers, mp3-playback, nice developer support, keyboards, barcode readers, ruggedness, etc.) would be nice, but I can live without it. I expect that if you have a brain, I should be able to buy these features from you as add-ons or upgrades, or even as more expensive models of the gadget I bought.

Why is it not already so?

The passage of time

Published on January 5, 2007 in ideas, philosophy, whine and work. 0 Comments

Time in an office environment seems to pass in two distinct modes, each of them strangely unlike the manner in which time passes anywhere else:

A) Time screams past in great leaps and bounds. This can be exemplified by the deep-hack-mode effect where one gets so far into a task that the outside world disappears, just after lunch for example, and reappears only when the task is complete, in a dark, silent office at 8:00pm, for example.
This can also happen in an exponential way: the snowballing deadline-crisis, where seemingly brief, simple tasks swell to fill unaccountably large amounts of time, and the working day shrinks incrementally until a very slight lateness becomes a vast and insurmountable slippage.

B) Time opens out like ones sense of space when driving out of a deep canyon into the open desert. The space of time between the present and an hour hence seems like a desolate unending trek to rival Sam and Frodo marching into Mordor. Seemingly solid, satisfying tasks melt like butter on a hot day and slip through ones fingers, either because they are blocked, or because they suddenly become trivial, and are done before you can blink. Tedious, frustrating tasks with no clearly defined goal or conclusion are abundant, but they do not satisfy, nor fulfil. All your favourite time-wasting blogs are mysteriously bereft of new posts for what seems like eternity. RSS feeds trickle to a stop and run dry. Google suddenly only returns places you’ve been before. A feeling of temporal agoraphobia sets in, leaving you feeling stranded and exposed, far from cover and visible to high, wheeling predators. There is nowhere to hide, and 5:00pm is impossibly far away.

It’s times like the latter, much too early on a Friday afternoon, when there’s nothing else left to do but turn to your own blog and blather. :)

Then, just as you’re about to post your blatherings, for all the world to see, the screen goes blue. Not the familiar blue of the blue-screen-of-death, but an unnerving pale sky-blue. Your computer responds to keystrokes, mouse-clicks, and even jabs at the power button with indifferent beeps. Eventually you manage to shut it down, and then to restart it, cursing all the while at the lost work. Time seems narrow again for a little while: your computer is too slow! It takes too damn long to boot! But then it’s booted, and once again there’s nothing to do but finish that blather.

Someone is trying to tell me something. I just wish I knew what it was…

The most annoying kind of bug…

Published on January 2, 2007 in technical and whine. 0 Comments

…is the one which stops happening completely when you turn on any kind of debugging, and starts again when you turn it off! AAAAARGH!

A bleak word picture

Published on December 29, 2006 in ideas, mobile, poetry and whine. 0 Comments

I am a crippled oil tanker, limping through a dark sea leaving behind me a glistening skein of rust flakes, leaked oil, dead fish, poison and revulsion. Likewise overhead an arrow highlights the hapless culprit, pointing across the sky at my lumbering and unsteady bulk, a smear of choking sulphrous carbon, its shadow deep as a starless night.
Why? I choose not to recall.
I struggle onwards, spending all my remaining fuel, destroying myself recklessly in desperation to reach port. It’s as much because I know I’m inexorably losing inches to the sea as any reflex-twitch of half-forgotten duty.
Duty? I prefer not to think about it.
I shake and am deafened by the relentless thunder of my own ill-tuned engines, blinded by the shroud of my own pollution, yet some lingering shred of reason guides me true to my destination.
My Destination? Safe harbour. Nothing else matters.
In the distance, all around me now, converging, others like myself toil, bringing in like cargoes of precious black poison to answer a common need. There are so many, yet I am alone in my own darkness, as they all each are.
Need? No! I DENY IT! Pretend yet that I carry this cargo for no man.
Even my engines now are failing. Their thundrous pitch grows deeper with every passing minute, and a high whining overtone of tortured metal more dominant. I must forego the self preservation of the bilge pumps, turn off my running lights, conserve all power for my final leap to safety.
Safety? They will not let me sink, not yet. They need the oil.
At last now, and all a-sudden there is a light ahead: a shadowed blood-red beacon that guides me in, this final lap, to meet Them there.
To meet who? NO! Avert mine eyes, even now I will not look.
But finally I come to rest, at dock. Eagerly They reach to take my cargo.
At last I can deny it no longer. I turn to face Them, to offer up the ancient riches I have spent myself to bring before Them. I behold the truth that I have long denied.
Before me They stand arrayed along the shore, their serried ranks stretch out to the horizon, dark but for the glitter of their infinite weaponry.
An army.
The army of all that Consumes, gathered here in preparation for the final assault upon the vestiges of beauty, the only remaining truth, the remnant guttering flame of knowledge, the last hope, the last love, the last joy.
All They were waiting for was some fuel.
For this, I have bled and strained and sweated myself dry.
Speechless with dread, self-loathing and despair I watch as They draw forth the oil, and siezing it, take up Their battle-cry: the monotonal drone of absolute indifference.
But even as They go, renewing their inexorable march towards the end of all that was light, I am assaulted anew. An urgent new command comes bellowed down the line, two words delivered in the cadences of unquestionable Authority: More! Now!
And I am cast out.

I am a crippled oil tanker, limping through a dark sea.

—

Footnote: This was mostly written at the end of a very long, difficult day’s work, full of futility and waste as some days inevitably are. I had a blister on my foot and a burgeoning migraine, and I was utterly flat broke. The train was particularly packed with screaming children and mumbling, stinking, belligerent drunks. In short, I was in an especially bad mood. This post should not be taken as significant to my actual life in any way.

Hell

Published on November 10, 2006 in whine. 0 Comments

Hell is just like the waking, living world, except that you can’t sleep, and you can’t die because you’re already dead.

We hold these truths to be self evident. :)

 Update:

No, I was wrong. Hell is a place where you are subjected to continuous hold-music, for eternity and it’s all cheap tacky Christmas Carols!!!

Mobile phone quandary

Published on October 20, 2006 in ideas and whine. 4 Comments

3120At present I am theoretically meant to be carrying two phones with me wherever I go: My original ‘3‘ phone which has my original number on it, and my new Telstra GSM el-cheapo ‘work’ phone. This is a pain… not only are two phones twice as bulky and twice as heavy, they’re also twice as easy to lose, twice as hard to locate and answer when ringing z800iand twice as hard to keep maintained in terms of configuraiton battery charge and address-book data.

This comes at a time when PDA-phones are becoming so sophisticated that I am seriously contemplating replacing my beloved Palm Pilot with a phone.

Why do I want two separate phones?

  1. I want to keep the number-spaces separate: Work calls belong with this job I’m doing now. Private calls will continue to be directed to me for as long as I live, and I want to keep the same number for as long as possible. This is both in terms of what number people call in order to reach me, and in terms of what number I appear to be calling from.
  2. Call costs are separate: Work calls can be paid for by my employer. I don’t want to have to sift them out of my phone bill by hand and then lodge a dubious and slow-moving expense claim. Nor do I want to wind up being ear-bashed over the three hour call to a friend in Zambia I made last month on my work phone. I am happy to pay for my private calls, really.
  3. Phone plan features are separate entities: My Telstra plan has excellent reception. When the phone in question is an on-call phone, this is not so much handy as vital. My Three plan enables E (on a longish Three plan herself) to call me for free, so long as the calls are less than 10 minutes long. It’s also priced better than a Telstra plan, even with my staff discount.

The question is: how do I keep these things while cutting down to only one handset? As far as I’m aware, nobody makes phones which take multiple sim-cards. I’m not sure if it’s possible to put more thn one plan on a single sim-card, but I’ll bet it would (a) void the warranty and (b) only enable the use of one plan at a time.

Call diversion is not an adequate solution. I say ‘in theory’ above because I’m only carrying one handset right now: my z800i. This yields the worst of both worlds:

  • I pay for all calls, work or otherwise
  • My work contacts are confused, and can see my private number when I call them
  • I only get Three-syle bodgy coverage
  • My phone-books collide

There has to be a better way. If anyone knows of one, or can suggest a guru who might, please tell me!