Reboot & Graduation

Posted by on July 22, 2014 No comments

I saw an online forum post recently with a request on options for backing up photos.  The person had a recent scare where they thought they had lost their hard drive and all their photos and was looking for something more.

This thought led me to remember the loss of all of my email some time ago.  When was that? …wow, three years, almost to the day.  You know what?  I don’t miss it.  I mean, there may be some times that I think about it, but as a whole, I don’t need it.  That was a different person.

That made me think, what else don’t I need?  And what else could I and others be hanging on to that are really unneeded.  Things that could be keeping us in a rut, keeping us from reinventing ourselves, from really progressing.  As I’ve said before, these things are an anchor.

Wisdom comes with age, they say.  Not sure it’s wisdom, but I sure wish I had some of the thoughts  that I do now when I was younger.  Then again, maybe I was incapable of those thoughts.  Back when you’re young, you’re just struggling to get ahead in the world, and damn if that isn’t so much harder now then it used to be.  So any idea of me dropping everything and starting from scratch is a little biased.

I think I’d be better prepared for rebooting my life as a young person because I’d have the energy and drive and not a lot of baggage that comes with being an established adult.  But I would be missing all the knowledge of how to get ahead that I’ve gained in my years.  Things like business knowledge, common sense, handyman skills, social skills.  All these I wouldn’t have available back then.  Yeah, things seem easy now, but I’ve been doing it for a long time.  The only thing I lack is youth.

But how appealing that sounds.  Just to have a schedule of every three years, you sell everything, move somewhere new, ditch all your friends and start over.  You could take on a totally different personality, have totally different interests, and through making new friends, experience things that would be completely incompatible with your previous life.  In a sense, it would be like experiencing reincarnation within one lifetime, with the benefit of keeping the memories of your past lives.

Oddly, that has been a very strange recurring thought for me – what will my next life be like?  I think about the missteps I’ve made in my current life and what I have learned in this life that I hope I recognize early enough in my next life to really make a larger impact on the world.  A bigger impact than I can do here and now.

Could I completely start over right now?  Doubtful.  Although it’s a very appealing thought, I feel that I am laying groundwork for something bigger in the future.  Learning patience and tolerance.  Developing empathy and recognizing evil… not evil exactly, but getting a good read on people and their motivations.  Seeing how selfish motivations are fleeting while sacrifice and sharing give much greater results.  Nowhere is this moral exercise more on display than in modern politics. 

So, this life is simply a study session.  I feel like I’m in my Junior year, and just like traditional school, the Senior year is going to fly right by and then you get to graduate. 

Tech Terms

Posted by on July 21, 2014 No comments

As someone who has grown up during the computer revolution, I can look at today’s society and marvel at how computers changed so many things in our lives.

A phrase I repeat in my posts is “I blame Windows,” which refers to the idea that Windows allowed a user to customize lots of different visual and behavior aspects, which then caused the user to expect that sort of custom, tailored experience in the real world, which then possibly contributed to the self-centered nature of younger generations.  Maybe.

But the thing I was thinking about last night was how computers have introduced language that possibly would never have entered into the mainstream otherwise.  I’m not talking about computer-specific terminology, despite my slight fascination of the term “drive” – disk drive, floppy drive, hard drive, usb drive, flash drive, and thumb drive.  I am talking about a couple of terms that possibly existed (I can’t be bothered to take the 10 seconds and check) but were of no concern to people until they got computers.  For example:

Font.  Everyone that uses a computer now knows about fonts and what they are used for.  That’s because everyone that got a computer has become a publisher in some way or another.  Even with something as simple as emails, you could get a admonishment, “your font is difficult to read/too big/ too small/ the wrong color/not installed on my computer”.

Back in “the old days”, you had a typewriter that had one font – Courier New.  You never had to worry about fonts.  Even people who wanted to care about them and wanted to sound artsy or something would say, “that’s a really nice typestyle on that advertisement”, which would lead a more pretentious artsy person to say, “It’s not a typestyle, it’s a typeface.”  But now everything is a font and everyone knows what that is.

Portrait and Landscape.  I don’t think these terms existed before computers, but I also don’t think they are strictly computer terms.  Maybe they existed in the publishing and photography industries, don’t feel like checking.  The thing I know is that before computers, we used terms like “vertically” and “long-ways” to describe orientation.  What a clever naming convention, too.  Describe portrait orientation to someone.  “It’s like a portrait”  And landscape – “It’s like a picture of a landscape.”  However, it is possible to have a portrait of a landscape taken in portrait orientation, but displayed in landscape.  That is a bit confusing to explain to someone.

Random Pieces

Posted by on July 10, 2014 No comments

Recently, Flickr, which is part or Yahoo, decided they were going to do away with integrated authentication (OAuth, SSO, whatever you want to call it), meaning you had to have a Yahoo login instead of logging in with a FaceBook or Google account.  Curiously, Microsoft Live wasn’t included in the SSO program, even though Yahoo has a good working relationship with Microsoft.  But none of that matters now.

Predictably, people are up in arms that they have to have a Yahoo login.  I’ve had a few Flickr accounts over time, two still current, but will probably drop down to just one.  That remaining one was integrated with FaceBook, so I had to go through the process of creating a new Yahoo account.  I didn’t like doing it, but what I do like is having 1TB of free picture hosting that I can access via API.  Let me explain that value a bit more.  Hopefully, Yahoo doesn’t read this post and figure out how to stop it.

I have a virtual server with GoDaddy that I can use to host whatever web sites I want.  It’s certainly not the fastest server in the world, but then again, I don’t host the biggest sites in the world.  As part of this bare-bones plan, I have about 30GB of drive space, 20 of which is used up by OS and system applications.  So, space is definitely at a premium. 

If I’m going to host a web site that has a photo gallery, which I do as part of a side project I’m involved in, things get a little tense.  But, with a little clever coding, I can host all the photos on Flickr and use their API to display the albums and photos on my website.  You’d never even know the images are on Flickr unless you look at the URLs, and what normal web user does that?  So, even with a free account, you can have 1TB of photo hosting – with no advertising.  Sounds a little too good to be true.  But I’m grateful.

And for that one reason alone, I can tolerate having a Yahoo account.  And I’d have to tell any of the people all upset about having to create a Yahoo account:  You’re late to the game, guys.  Flickr used to have its own login before Yahoo bought them and before SSO became a “thing”.  Would you have been upset that you had to create a whole new Flickr account to use their service?  Of course not.  Get over it.

In other news, for the afore-mentioned side project, I just purchased a vinyl cutting machine and heat press machine.  It seemed like a good purchase at the time because of all the team jerseys that were always needed on short notice.  And also, I am a big proponent of doing as much myself as possible.  When you control everything from end-to-end, your costs and timelines are more predictable.  (It’s almost like dropping login support for other parties and doing it all yourself, eh, Yahoo?)  Outsourcing the printing of the jerseys had previously resulted in different costs, sometimes due to rush jobs, sometimes due to the printer’s whim.  One job resulted in an incorrect name printed, with no time for correction since we paid out the nose for rush processing and shipping anyway.  So bringing the shirt printing in-house was, to me, the best solution.  Par for the course, both machines had to be rush shipped so we had enough time to print jerseys for the next game.  Even so, buying entry-level equipment only cost about $600.

Now that I own this equipment, there is a serious potential to make that money back and then some.  I have to say, the setup and operation of this equipment was really simple.  If you can: use any graphics program, print a document, follow directions, and count, you can probably run a t-shirt business.  And I have to say, watching a vinyl cutter, which is just a plotter with a knife instead of a pen, is mesmerizing.

Who Wants To Live Forever?

Posted by on June 28, 2014 No comments

Things that MSN Healthy Living says are bad to eat:

  • BBQ Sauce
  • Pasta Salad
  • Macaroni Salad
  • Potato Salad
  • Ranch Dressing
  • Fatty steaks
  • Breaded chicken
  • Fried chicken
  • Hot dogs
  • Sausage
  • Hamburgers
  • Pie
  • Cake
  • Gluten-free foods
  • Greek frozen yogurt
  • Asian Chicken salad
  • Fruit Smoothies
  • Fish Sandwiches
  • Chinese vegetarian dishes
  • Chipotle’s burrito bowl
  • Tomato soup
  • Baked fuckin’ potato
  • Omelet
  • Microwave popcorn
  • Light salad dressings
  • Trail mix
  • Granola
  • Artichoke spinach dip
  • Flavored fat-free yogurt
  • Dried fruit
  • Flavored soy milk
  • Energy drinks (well, duh)
  • Turkey sandwich
  • Parfait
  • Blue corn chips
  • Chicken wrap
  • Low-fat muffins
  • Frozen diet dinners
  • Canned soups
  • Veggie pizza
  • Spinach pasta
  • Wheat bread (or any fucking bread)
  • Diet soda (duh, again)
  • Reduced fat peanut butter
  • Fruit cocktail
  • Swordfish
  • Imported catfish
  • Farmed eel
  • King Mackerel
  • Orange Roughy
  • Chilean Sea Bass
  • Shark
  • Imported Shrimp
  • Tilefish
  • Bluefin Tuna
  • Non-organic strawberries
  • Anything from McDonalds
  • Canned Tomatoes
  • Corn.  Yes, corn.
  • White chocolate
  • Artificial sweeteners (no, really?)
  • Sprouts
  • Anything with food dyes
  • Ice cream sundaes from chain restaurants
  • Eggnog
  • Candied Yams
  • Creamed Spinach
  • Cranberry Sauce
  • Cheese straw
  • Fruitcake
  • Swedish Meatballs
  • Pot Roast
  • Yorkshire pudding
  • Prime Rib
  • Sausage stuffing
  • Dark meat turkey
  • Green bean casserole with fried onions
  • Croissants
  • Potato pancakes
  • Lobster Newburg
  • Yule log
  • Peppermint White Chocolate Mocha
  • Caramel apples
  • Gingerbread
  • Sugar cookies
  • Plum pudding
  • Mashed Potatoes
  • Gooseberry pie
  • Beef Wellington
  • Glazed Ham
  • Gravy
  • Cinnamon Rolls
  • Peanut Brittle
  • Apple pie a la mode
  • Chocolate covered cherries
  • Cheese fondue
  • Shepard’s pie
  • Smoothie King’s Hulk Strawberry Smoothie
  • Starbucks’ Double Chocolaty Chip Frappuccino Blended Creme with whipped cream
  • Coldstone’s PB&C Shake
  • Auntie Anne’s Jumbo Pretzel Dog
  • Cinnabon’s Caramel Pecanbon
  • Wendy’s Sweet and Spicy Boneless Wings
  • Dunkin’ Donuts’ Coffee Cake Muffin

And although there are many more articles I could have pulled items from, I think that serves to show that if you really want to be healthy, all you can eat is organic lettuce.  But even then, some articles complain about foods that are improperly produced or prepared, so make sure that straight-from-the-ground organic lettuce doesn’t have any bugs, dirt, or animal feces on it.

Do not, I repeat, do not cook.  Mankind has been lucky to survive as long as it has with people indiscriminately making food.  If you didn’t pull it from the ground or from a bush or tree with your own hands, it is not safe and you will die.

Back Into Music, Do They Still Make Music?

Posted by on June 25, 2014 No comments

Like the changing of the seasons, it’s time to cycle back into music-making.  It’s been quite a long time since I’ve had any major interest in it.  I guess mostly because I haven’t felt like I’ve had any time.  Everything seems to be experienced in small doses here and there, and when I take a long time to sit down with an idea and try to expand it, I start to feel guilty, like I’m not paying attention to something that needs attention.  This sort of meshes in with prior posts about how fleeting inspiration is and how life gets in the way. 

Sometimes a real inspiration-killer is the effort it takes to set up and manage a recording session.  When your time is limited, you kind of have to have everything planned in advance.  You can find plenty of videos of musicians sitting in a studio, trying out different things until something gels.  I used to have that luxury; I don’t feel I have that now.

Like when you have a good starting riff, then you go searching for the right sound patch to express it.  Half an hour later, you’re midway through one synth’s patches and still have a few more synths to go.  I guess that’s why so many people compose on a piano or acoustic guitar – deal with the sounds later.

So, I’m upgrading my office studio again, adding a third monitor to my computer to be wall-mounted above my keyboards so I can keep the recording software in front of me (Cubase in ma face).  In past setups, I’ve had my computer to my side and to my back.  I hope that being in front will help me be more productive since I don’t have to turn around all the time.

I’ve burnt out two mixers over the last few years, so I’ve been playing through headphones.  That’s also going to be rectified with the upgrade – another mixer.

Yikes.  Looking back at previous blog posts, it looks like I’ve been musically idle for over three years.  That’s really no good.  Oh, no…  Checking my hard drive, the last thing I recorded was back in 2009.  Where does the time go?!  That is nothing like the changing of seasons, that’s more the changing of a generation.

And speaking of generations, it goes without saying that music is “done” differently now, and I have little interest in trying to do it that way or trying to sound similar.  I do wonder if the effort to create modern music is more or less than what it takes me to do it the old way.  For example, I have to write and play multiple tracks for a 4 minute song.  Newer composers have to find to find a bunch of samples that work well together, loop them in some coherent order and then spend who-knows-how-much-time applying effects.  At least that’s how I view modern music.

I listen to old-style music written in the new way and it seems to be the worst of both styles (effort-wise).  Writing and performing everything, then embellishing it with effects and post-processing.  That seems like so much effort, and it seems like so much more than I could devote in my tiny blocks of available time.

Like when you have a complete song, then you go searching for the right effects to apply.  Half an hour later, you’ve run through one effect unit’s settings and still have half a dozen different units to go.  On one track.  It feels like I’ve been there before.

Food Bitching, With A Twist

Posted by on June 20, 2014 No comments

Here we go again.  Another restaurant on my blacklist, which is a shame because I’ve been very tolerant of them in the past.  But this incident had a a new, unexpected element to it.

I arrive and wait for attention.  This is typical.  I have no idea why this restaurant doesn’t have a host.  Finally, a man notices me and tells me I can have a seat anywhere.  And I do.

He brings me bread and a glass of water and says the waitress will be by soon.  Huh.  I guess they did get a host.  Good for them.  A lady comes out and takes my order.  Coke, salad, and an entrée.  Nothing fancy.

After a while, the host comes back out and asks if I need anything.  I just placed my order and I have bread and water, so, no.  I’m fine.  Good, attentive host.

Another party comes in and sits in the booth in front of me.  The waitress is apparently good friends with them, since they texted each other before arrival.  When the waitress eventually comes back around to take their order, she sits in the booth with them, chats with them for an extended time, and in-between, takes their order.  I’m thinking, “Where’s my coke?” 

Waitress goes away, checks on another table, then brings the neighboring party’s salads out.  Um, where’s my salad?  She goes away, comes out and clears a table, checks on another table and refreshes their drinks.  At this point, my water is empty and I’m being completely ignored, even when she looks right at me.  As I sit and stew, I decide:  It’s on.

At last, the waitress brings out my entrée.  I say thank you, then turn on the asshole mode.  “Now, may I have my Coke, my salad, and a refill of my water.  Please.”  She is stunned for a moment and says the other guy is my waiter.  What?  I thought he was the host.  She took my order.  She brought my food out.  I thought she was my waitress.  I tell her such.  Nope, they had switched.  She said that she got the Coke and salad ready, but he just left them there.

Wait.  She just admitted that saw my drink and salad sit there in back and did nothing about it?  She says the guy is new and she doesn’t think he’s going to work out.  Yeah, I never saw him again after he asked me if I needed anything, but I didn’t think he was a waiter.  In hindsight, why wasn’t he bussing the tables?  Hmmm.

Anyway, she apologizes and says she will get my Coke and take the salad off the bill and talk to her manager.  I’m semi-sympathizing with her at this point because of the misunderstanding that (at the time) I didn’t realize was more her fault than anything.  But then, a challenger appears!

The guy in the booth in front of me half turns around and says, “This is my first night here, and I’ll be your waiter.”  Remember, this guy is close friends with the waitress.  Obviously he’s been there plenty.  I didn’t quite get where he was going with his statement.

I chuckle and say, “Oh, I’ve been here several times." 

His voice changes slightly and he says, “This is a good place to eat.” 

Instinctively, I sense he’s a bit peeved about my dressing down of his friend.  I reply sympathetically and emphatically, “You’re right, this is a good place.” 

His voice changes more significantly and he orders, “Then shut the fuck up and enjoy it.” 

Dramatic pause.

Using a tone I have mastered that basically says, I have to say this, but I don’t mean a word of it, I reply,  “I’m sorry if I offended you, sir.”

He delivers more rambling f-bomb accusations with his back to me.  His wife is saying, “Honey, stop.”

Well, that’s that.  Without a bite of my food, I say, “You know, I don’t think this is a good place.” I remove my napkin and stand up.  I walk by his booth and say to him, “Thank you very much, sir.” 

I go to the waitress, who, despite the situation I put on her and the one happening between me and her friend, is helping another table… before she gets my damn Coke.  I put a bill in her hand and say, “Here’s $10 for the food. I won’t be eating here again.”  She chases after me trying to give the money back, but I shooed her off.

Sometimes the poison isn’t just the staff, it’s the patrons, too.

People Don’t Have a Clue

Posted by on June 11, 2014 No comments

Today, I read that there is a bittorrent client for Windows Phone.  So, I’m pretty damn confused now.

People are shunning desktop PCs because they don’t want to have to deal with the “computer-y” stuff.  But people want to do more “computer-y” stuff on their phones, despite the fact that the UI is less optimized for such tasks.

I’m wondering where the middle is, if there is one.  Will computers look like phones, like how OSX is morphing into iOS and the Windows 8 UI becomes standard across devices?  Will phones look more like PCs, like what we already had and hated with Windows Mobile?

People want to do one thing at a time and have multiple things going at one time.  The desktop metaphor has become too complex for people, but they complain when you can’t easily switch between apps on a phone.

Every single possible size of screen is available from phones, to phablets, to tablets, to laptops, to desktops, to multi-display desktops.  Everyone bitches that this one or that one is too big or too small or too heavy or too fragile.

Fail on the Wrong Scale

Posted by on May 20, 2014 No comments

Reading through the tech news sites today, I see Microsoft has released a new model of their Surface tablet.  And, even though I hate myself for doing this because it makes me hate the world, I read the comments on the articles.  The comments that always got to me were the simple “Total Fail” posts.  Some would back it up with something like, “No one’s talking about this.  It’s dead on arrival.” or “Look at how little press this is getting.  Microsoft can’t even get the word out.”

I think I’ve finally come to understand this.  When you’re dealing with an ultra-powerful tablet – one that is on par with business-class laptops – quite simply, it’s not for you.  I don’t mean you as in everybody, I mean you, as in the person who is spamming “Fail” all over blog article comments.  This is an adult device. Let the adults handle this.

The people that are running companies and making purchasing decisions for their IT teams are going to evaluate this on a slightly different measure than how many denigrating posts the product receives or how many talk shows the product is mentioned on.  This is not for you, mass consumer.  But that’s not to say you can’t buy it or make great use of it.  If you do, you’ll be using professional-grade hardware, and everyone will assume you are capable at handling it.

The problem is that tech blogs attract the wrong crowd, because they deal in consumer electronics.  If you went on a true IT blog and they posted an article about the newest HP datacenter server or the newest Cisco core router, you’re not going to have a bunch of “This server is dead on arrival” posts.  You will read valid critiques of the hardware’s shortcomings, in other words, intelligent discourse.

I guess it’s pretty typical of the modern, self-centered, never-satisfied, all-about-me mentality to think that if a product doesn’t do exactly what you want it to, it must be useless to everyone.  And with that conclusion, you must speak with authority on the matter, because, well, it’s all about you.

But guess what?  It’s not.  It’s not for you so it’s not about you.

Heads In The Cloud

Posted by on May 15, 2014 No comments

Ok, I’m going to call it now.  I don’t know when it will happen, but I’m becoming convinced it will.  I might have mentioned this idea in a previous entry, but I’m making this post stand-alone.

Do you have data in “the cloud”?  The motherfucking “cloud”?  The stupid term for Internet storage?  The one where some idiot manager looked at the Visio diagram for wide area networks, represented by… a cloud, and called it “the cloud” and it stuck?

Anyway.  You probably do.  Your smartphone saves backup data to “the MF’n cloud.”  You probably have Google Drive or OneDrive or DropBox or one of the many others.  You may actually have online backups through Carbonite or its competitors.  Surely you understand you are trusting these companies to stay in business as long as they have your stuff.

But, you’re not alone.  Businesses are being strongly pitched to store their stuff in “the MF’n cloud”.  Not only that, some businesses completely exist in this etheric realm – no tangible assets at all.  Today, Microsoft sent me an email stating they had developed a utility to move your TFS projects from your local machines to “Visual Studio Online” – a goddamn cloud for code.  (TFS is a tool for storing and keeping track of source code.)

Now hold on one minute here.  Microsoft wants me to take all my business’s code, the stuff that RUNS my business, and put it on their servers.  Oh, I’m not worried about security.  Seriously, I’m not.  There is one scenario I predict is going to happen, and it may happen to any one of these companies that deal in virtual, rented storage.

On that fateful day, there will be a news story about how CloudCo has defaulted on a financial obligation.  Then there is a flurry of more “investigative” news stories as people realize, “Oh shit, they’ve been insolvent for a really long time, although the executives have made tons of the money and are saying they had none of the idea this was happening.  How could we be such stupid Americans?  Is YouTube still up?”  No, this isn’t like the banks.  This is different. 

Banks may have your money, but you can replace that with other money, especially with money you get from FDIC guarantees.  Cloud companies have your data.  Your pictures, your documents, your emails, your contacts, your digital life.  There’s no FDIC guarantee on that.  It cannot be replaced.  Do you see the difference here?

Ok, back to that day.  CloudCo, says, “Sorry for your bad fortune, we’re going to have to close up.”  Government officials will immediately say “My pictures!” and will create something that sounds impressive, like injunction, that effectively says, “we’ll make people provide CloudCo service for free until everyone can get all their data off their servers.”  Problem is, CloudCo worked very hard to get a lot of data.  Too much data to move.  Too much data for a company to completely revamp its processes to use another provider.  So much data that CloudCo became “too big to fail”.  Oh wait, this is just like the banks.  It’s actually more insidious. 

I’m saying it’s going to happen.  I have no idea when or to whom it will happen, but it’s gonna happen.  And if you really wanna get in on this, you can do it yourself.  Start a cloud company.  It will be like minting money.  And when it all falls apart, you won’t even see a day in jail.  I can promise that, because America loves entrepreneurs.  Especially ones that have a plan, even if that plan is to take the money and run.

The Rules Enforce Mediocrity

Posted by on May 8, 2014 No comments

As part of my “rebuilding”, I’ve been working on my music on keyboards.  I lost a lot of stamina and dexterity, so I need to get that rebuilt.  The best exercises I had are a lot of songs from my past.  Because of my inactivity, I had forgotten how a lot of them were played, so it was a learning experience.  Probably easier for me to learn, since it’s in my personal style.

And it’s the personal style that really threw me.  I never really had formal training, just learned and played by ear.  But much later in my playing, when I learned “the rules”, I started writing with “the rules” in mind.  So when I had to relearn my older music, it didn’t follow “the rules” and was more difficult to figure out.  It made me wonder if breaking the rules is a good or bad thing.

I think my music is pretty unique, probably due to the lack of rule-abiding.  That may make it more inaccessible, but that’s the price you pay.