November 03, 2006
Note to self: how to use Amazon S3 storage
Derek found this description that seems better than Jungle Disk. I noticed the Jungle Disk app was trying to connect to weird non-amazon IP addresses, so I didn't feel comfortable using it.
http://blog.eberly.org/2006/10/09/how-automate-your-backup-to-amazon-s3-using-s3sync/
This looks nice, being able to store stuff for $0.15 per GB per month.
Posted by billo at 12:06 PM | Comments (1)
October 30, 2006
HDR imaging
My new favorite digital photo toy is HDR (High Dynamic Range) imaging. This is where you take three pictures, each at a different exposure, and then use special software to meld them together. It allows you to take a picture like this, where you would normally be able to see only the foreground with a bright, washed out sky behind, or a nice sky, with a dark uninteresting foreground.
These pictures are a huge fad right now on flickr (which is how I found out about the whole technique). Go on flickr and search for "hdr" and you'll see a ton of stuff. Including nice flame wars about home some people are "abusing" the HDR techniques.
To create my images, I bought Photomatix Pro, which (at $99) is way cheaper than buying Photoshop. If you want me to HDR a picture for you, send me three jpgs, each with a different exposure, and I'll merge them for you with the software. If I know you ;-)
Posted by billo at 01:31 PM | Comments (1)
September 29, 2006
Google Reader doesn't suck!
Google just launched a major revision of Google Reader. I guess they realized that it was just about the worst RSS feed reader ever made. It looks like they completely threw everything from before in the trash an rewrote it from scratch. Which was 100% for sure the right thing to do.
I used to use bloglines for reading feeds, but I got a little tired of some of the bugs. Then I switched to the desktop-based NetNewsWire, which is awesome. The key to that is that you can synchronize your feeds so that you can read stuff at home and at work. But synching is not as good as a web-hosted thing.
So I'm going to try Google Reader for a while. If it lets me speed through feeds at even half the speed of NNW, then I'll stick with it.
Posted by billo at 02:06 PM | Comments (0)
September 06, 2006
Asterisk Open Source PBX
We bough an inexpensive cheapo PBX for work about two years ago. At the time, it seemed like a great idea. It was way less money than the equivalent Nortel or Lucent office phone system. The office extensions were IP phones, but they were H323 phones, and not SIP phones. It's been really terrible. The phones themselves have terrible build quality, bad buttons and usability, and very, very, very bad sound quality. It was about $12,000 for everything: server, phones and software.
Recently we spent a little money to try out Asterisk, the free, open-source PBX. It's software developed by a company that sells hardware for connecting to phones and phone lines, Digium.
It is really cool, and it works. I set up a CentOS Linux with one of the 24-port Digium boards. All extensions and dialing rules, and IVR trees are managed with .conf files. I used the O'Reilly Asterisk book as documentation, since the documentation that is available on the web is pretty bad and/or hard to find. It took about 6 hours to get everything set up the way I wanted it, including voice mail boxes for everybody, a dial by name directory and a connection to outbound VOIP (so we can use fewer analog lines from Verizon.)
We're at the point now where we are going to buy new SIP phones for everyone (we need about 24 of them in total). The total cash outlay on the product will then be about $5000, including the phones and the server and the digium hardware. We should be able sell our crummy old system for about $3000, if eBay prices for it hold up.
There are some commercial vendors that sell complete, turnkey Asterisk systems. Fonality seems to be the most popular. While I'm sure they are great quality, they aren't really as hackable, since the turnkey vendors can't support people mucking about in the configurations.
It's even tempting to replace my home phone system with an Asterisk one: about $250 for a 4-line board (2 incoming and 2 outgoing), and a couple of SIP phones I could really stop those telemarketers!
Posted by billo at 03:50 PM | Comments (0)
July 05, 2006
Google browser sync
Why didn't I know about this before? It's exactly what I've been looking for since Bookmarks Synchronizer (which never worked very reliably) suddenly stopped working.
It's very cool: syncs bookmarks, cookies, remembered form fields, even tabs and windows between all my FireFox browser instances (8 of them) on Mac, Windows and Linux. Yes, I have a Windows PC. It's for games.
Posted by billo at 04:29 PM | Comments (0)
June 13, 2006
To view this stupid video, you must buy a new computer.
I try real hard not to say mean things on this blog. Really, I do. But give me a break:
What it really means:
To use this product, you need to go to the store, buy a crappy operating system for $150 that will take 10 hours to install and patch, cost an extra $40-60 to protect it from viruses and spyware, and, oh you might actually need to buy a new computer to run it on. Then you can install this free software and see this video.
This isn't a dig so much as Microsoft, but rather at the ersatz media company, which decides to ignore 5% of its audience, and then has the gall to suggest that said audience needs nothing but "free software" watch its product.
Hey guys: quicktime (free viewer on all platforms); MPEG, MPEG2 (free viewers on all platforms); flash video (FREE VIEWERS ON ALL PLATFORMS!!). Media company's job: maximize audience (or maximize high-value demographic, I suppose). Media company's non-job: enhance monopoly power of a software company. Get a clue!
Posted by billo at 05:25 PM | Comments (0)
March 30, 2006
Growl notification managed for OS X
Growl is a really cool utility. It essentially lets you unify all "you have mail" or "something happened" or whatever notifications. At first it seemed a little pointless to me, but after using it for a few days, I really like it. Also, I'm discovering that some applications that I really like are growl-enabled, like ecto.
Posted by billo at 09:14 AM | Comments (0)
March 21, 2006
Riya image search in beta.
Riya image search is finally in beta. This is the photo web site that can supposedly recognize faces, so you can search for pictures of your kids by name without tagging every single one of your pictures. Presumably there is some training that goes on for a few pics.
I'd like to try it, but they use an uploader, which is only available on Windows XP. Come on, how hard would it be to set up a special FTP server so anybody could just use an FTP client to upload their pics?
Posted by billo at 08:25 AM | Comments (0)
March 09, 2006
egopoly20060309
I haven't been back to visit writely for a while. Boy, they have been busy. In addition to getting acquired by google, they have added some awesome features. Including blog posting (this post was authored and posted directly from writely) and PDF export. So awesome.
Posted by billo at 04:58 PM | Comments (0)
February 17, 2006
AJAX collaborative spreadsheet.
Most people in a corporate environment use
spreadsheets for maintaining lists, and mail
them around. It's a behavior that cries out
for collaborative software. I've never seen a
very compelling solution, but numbler looks pretty
promising.
More accessible and live than Quickbase, though it
is less structured and more free-form. Which is
a good thing for a lot of situations.
Posted by billo at 05:40 PM | Comments (0)
February 10, 2006
Hosting FireFox add-ons on your own site
As I just learned, if you want to host FireFox extensions on your own site,
you might have to add a mime type mapping to your apache config.
Here is the line I added:
application/x-xpinstall xpi
If you don't have this, your apache might assume the file is plain text, and the user will just get a screen full of junk.
Posted by billo at 11:22 AM | Comments (0)
FireFox Bookmarks Synchronizer that works with 1.5.0.x
I find the FireFox add-on version management system supremely annoying. It's stupid that it assumes that your plugins won't work in the first place, and doesn't give you the option of overriding the installer's decision not to install.
It's extra stupid that an add-on that claims to work with 1.5 will not be allowed in 1.5.0.1. It's annoying how much time I waste tracking down updated plugins when I upgrade FireFox (across the 6 or seven different computers I use at home and work). Some add-ons have good support by their authors, and they are automatically fixed. But many are not. So one is forced to extract the .xpi file, hack it, repackage, then distribute it. (Thank goodness for FolderShare file sync!).
I just fixed bookmarks sync, and I'm putting it here for anybody else who wants it.
Posted by billo at 11:11 AM | Comments (0)
December 21, 2005
Ecto
Ecto is a fat/native client for editing blogs. This post is mostly a test of ecto and what i can do. Install was fairly easy (typical Mac install: drag this icon to your "Applications" folder).
It seems pretty nice. Much better than the generally clunky Movable Type form editor. It even has emacs-ish key bindings!
It supposedly can import photos from iPhoto. Let's see if that works:
Wow, cool. That was pretty easy. There is an iTunes button, but, I'm not sure what that does. It has an "amazon" button which does this: 
"Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmers' Guide, Second Edition" (Dave Thomas, Chad Fowler, Andy Hunt)
Here is a screen shot of editing this post:
OK, now post!
Posted by billo at 09:03 AM | Comments (0)
December 06, 2005
FolderShare
I first read about FolderShare on Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed. (Infectious greed is an excellent site; Paul is some kind of freakish VC who actually can write code and has a very high common sense IQ. If you read two sites about the Internet business, they should be Infectious Greed and Paul Graham.)
I finally figured out he was talking about a web service/application, so I went and tried it out. At first, I didn't really get it; the interface seemed a bit clunky. But then, whoa. Something clicked and I realized that it was something I have been thinking about for years. Real, simple, fast, unobtusive file synchronization.
They really nailed the simplicity of it. Well almost, since it did take me a bit of time to "get it." There are a few things they can do to guide people to that moment of clarity a bit quicker.
I keep many parts of my home directory under CVS control; this lets me synch the dozen different unix home directories I have around the world, at least in terms of things like shell setup, emacs lisp, etc. It works well, except:
- I have to remember to check-in and check-out semi-regularly.
- If I change a file on machine A, then I don't check in, and I go to machine B, and I don't have ssh access to machine A, then I'm out of luck.
- It's not something I could ever get my wife to understand or use.
- While easy to set up on just about any unix (cvs and ssh are pretty much everywhere now, it doesn't help on Windows. Not that I use Windows much, nor do I need my shell init when I do.)
- Binary files are a bear.
Now, FolderShare can't replace my little CVS hack, partially because there is no Linux client (or any client except Windows and Mac), but also because I actually care about the revision history for those files I keep under CVS. But, for Word documents, or keeping my wife's files in synch between her office computers at home and work, FolderShare totally rocks.
I'm still poking around, and the security issues have me a little bit on edge; but I haven't seen any serious holes yet. But if you are a Windows or Mac user, or both, and you have a lot of computers you have to work at, you have to try it.
OK, here's the kicker. FolderShare is a Microsoft product now. They acquired the company that makes it. Maybe they are finally waking up and smelling the network.
Posted by billo at 11:38 PM | Comments (0)
November 28, 2005
Get your email away from your ISP.
Many people still have email addresses like [email protected] or [email protected] If you are such a person, you should stop doing this now.
In the early days of the popularized Internet (starting in 1993-1994),and even earlier than that when services like AOL, Compuserve, Delphi and Prodigy were how people connected to online services, your online identity was tied to your connectivity. The ISP provided an email address, a dial-in number, and maybe even some server-side storage and a unix shell account. That was the only way it could work, because people didn't have their own vanity domain names, most businesses didn't have email systems that could talk to the world, and the web-based hosted email (hotmail being the first really successful version) didn't exist yet.
But now there are lots of choices, and there is no reason why you should link your personal email to the company that provides your connectivity. In fact, I would argue that there are lots of reasons not to create such a link.
Don't you go changin'
First, you are likely to change your ISP periodically. You might move, you might decide to switch to cable from DSL, or from cable to FIOS, or from DSL to WiMax. If you don't know what these things are, it doesn't matter: the point is that you have choices you can make, and it's likely you will change once or more, to save money or get better service. Or you might move, and have to change for that reason. Think of the headache it is to tell all your friends, and all the web sites where you shop your bank or whatever that you have a new email address. It's a pain. So you should pick an email address that you can commit to. That you know will be resistant to changes over the years.
It's a matter of trust.
Let's face it, running an online service isn't easy. Stuff happens; servers melt; files get lost. Whoever you decide to trust with your email should be someone who's main job it is to run an online service. An ISP's main job is making sure your connection is available. Furthermore, there is something to be said for being part of a big population. If you have a small ISP, you are in a small boat, with a small number of other people, being captained by a crew that really doesn't have billions of dollars of stock valuation keeping the pressure on. The boat could go under, the crew could mutiny and the world wouldn't really notice.
So, get on one of the big boats. That means Yahoo! Mail, GMail or Hotmail. All of those services are battle-tested, used by millions, and probably never going away. At least, "never" on internet time scales.
It's also a good idea to set up your mail so that you can download a copy from your hosted email provider. Just in case they do go under, you won't lose your history. GMail and Yahoo! both let you do this, by using a regular email client to POP download your messages. (One caveat here: do not EVER use outlook express. It's closed, single-file mail storage system is the source of many horror stories. Use Thunderbird, or any other email client that stores mail in widely understood formats.)
You should be you.
If you can afford it, and if you can acquire the technical expertise, you really should get your own "vanity" domain on the Internet. It doesn't cost much, as little as $5/year. But it puts your email address under your control, even if you have to change hosted email providers and/or ISPs. Yahoo! and GMail both allow you to set "from" addresses to your vanity domain. I'm sure hotmail is not far behind.
I've had my own vanity domain/email address for 8 years. In that time, I've gone through 6 ISPs, five hosting companies, 7 email clients, 3 anti-spam solutions. But my email address has been the same, and it was well worth the investment.
Matrix of email goodness
In the chart below, substitute "Yahoo!" or "Hotmail" for GMail; they are basically the same as far as this chart is concerned.
|
ISP Email |
GMail |
GMail with vanity forwarding |
GMail with forwarding and POP |
|
|
ISP change protection |
no |
yes |
yes |
yes |
|
disaster risk |
worst |
better |
better |
best |
|
GMail change protection |
N/A |
worst |
better |
best |
Until recently, I hosted my email myself, and even had my own web-based access. Recently, that has become a bear to maintain, partially due to dealing with ever-increasing SPAM, partially due to having to keep up with security patches on the webmail. So now I have everything going to gmail, with a backup copy only kept on my own server.
Posted by billo at 03:52 PM | Comments (2)
November 16, 2005
Google Analytics
I set up Google Analytics on two web sites at work. One is a test site, and one is the production site. There were quite a few problems setting it up; I gather from the support groups on google, and blog chatter that they are having a hard time meeting demand. I can totally sympathize. If my company's web site were dropped in front of 50 million users at once, we would crash and burn. Hard.
But the problem I'm having now is that I set up the production site and the test site. But only the test site has the actual javascript on it to activate the tracking. However, Google is reporting that both sites have had the analytics installled. So I think they are still having a lot of trouble.
I'm rooting for them. I still feel like Google is the underdog.
Posted by billo at 06:52 PM | Comments (0)
November 08, 2005
FireFox AdBlock and Flash
For a while, I've had problems with my flash plugin acting flaky in FireFox on Mac OS Tiger. I finally got fed up and tried upgrading to the Flash 8 plug-in. No luck. So I deleted my entire FireFox profile, down to nothing, and voilà, it worked again.
Then I started to add my FireFox extensions back in. Turns out AdBlock (which I love) was somehow interfering with Flash. I don't know if this affects Windows FireFox. It's annoying, because there are some useful Flash sites out there, notably the new Yahoo! maps.
Posted by billo at 05:06 PM | Comments (2)
November 07, 2005
New Flock Browser
There is a new browser spun off from FireFox called flock. It has some cool shit, like it uses your del.icio.us account for bookmarks. And I am posting this blog entry directly from it's self-configuring blog-posting über-client.
Pretty sweet.
technorati tags: browser, firefox
Posted by billo at 05:24 PM | Comments (0)
October 05, 2005
Movable Type Editor
I really hate the movable type editor. Derek pointed me to fckeditor.com and these instructions for connecting to movable type.Much better!
Posted by billo at 12:05 PM | Comments (0)
September 06, 2005
MediaWiki Experiment
I started playing around with MediaWiki. I don't really have any need or desire to start a public Wiki on any topic, but I do like a place to keep notes for myself. Currently, I have a "doc" directory that I keep in my various unix home directories; it is under CVS control, so I can keep in reasonable synch across the dozen or so unix systems where I have accounts.
This works amazingly well for scripts and emacs files, as well as .cshrc and other shell configs. It's sort of OK for little text files. The problem is that often I need to look at a little document, but I might not be at a place where I can easily get a shell prompt.
I haven't liked most Wiki software I've tried, but I do like MediaWiki, the software that powers Wikipedia. So I set up my own install, locked it so that only I can write articles, and put it behind .htaccess so no one can even see it but me. Curiously (or not, I suppose) there is no way in MediaWiki to easily add read restrictions. There is a sort of hackish patch, but it is for exceptions and not to lock down the whole site.
I like it. Set up was very simple; install the files into web root; chmod a+w config; create a mysql db; go through the web based install; delete config dir. Done.
Posted by billo at 11:41 PM | Comments (0)
May 18, 2005
Note to self: investigate grease monkey
Greasemonkey is a FireFox extension that lets you make personal hacks of web pages you visit, just-in-time.
This is so cool, I have to find out more. There is a nice little document here.
Posted by billo at 09:56 PM | Comments (1)