Oops!

January 16, 2005

At the time it seemed like a good idea. A dozen or so hours ago I was working away on the new photo website for Nevada Boys State. It is a work in progress that shares web space on this server. There were a few glitches that made setting up Gallery in a sub-directory of Drupal difficult. I found a way around that and all was good to go. The Boys State photos aren't quite up yet, but everything else looked good. So I headed out to go on a horseback ride.

Oops!

There comes murphy! I didn't check to see that I didn't make a boneheaded mistake and leave my main websites down all day. Of course, having failed to check they were down. Tonight a few tweaks on the Boys State site and then a click to test and the '404 Not Found' error pops up. Head over to the error logs and sure enough nothing has been working all day.

Theory of Evolution

January 15, 2005

Thursday's decision by Judge Clarence Cooper means that the Cobb County, Georgia, has to remove stickers from their textbooks reading "Evolution is a theory, not a fact."

The issue here is one of linguistics. In the scientific realm things which are well understood are called theories. In order to be equitable other theories would include the theory of gravity. Both gravity and evolution have roughly the same amount of supporting evidence. It is the desire of some religious factions to deny the origins of the human race that led to the stickers in the first place.

Judge Cooper correctly recognized that this is a religious matter, not a matter of science.

Task master

January 14, 2005

Recently I back to a tool I haven't used for a while. Alex King's Tasks Pro webserver application is one of the best out there. The user interface, via a web page, is better than many applications made for the desktop. It surpasses many desktop applications in terms of interface, works well with PHP iCalendar and therefore is simple to integrate with calendar programs.

One thing I didn't see made terribly clear in the documentation is you don't need to run cron on the same machine as the web server. Certainly there are advantages in not having problems caused by network communications, but there is no need to do so, an advantage if you don't control cron on the webserver but do on a remote machine.

Next I plan to add a service module to allow clients to submit their tickets through a web interface directly into my task manager.

Off to the Woods

January 14, 2005

I am leaving tomorrow at 0600 for a week of training in the woods. I will be in a six person team practicing evasion and surival skills. I expect to be cold and hungry most of the time. It should be some good training.

The past few days in the classroom have been good training, as well. We are learning about you to survive in different environments, how to resist interrogation, and how to escape from activity. We are also learning some classified stuff about how to avoid becoming a POW in the first place.

I will let you all know how things went when I get back.

Take care,
James

Apple is going to laugh all the way to the bank

January 13, 2005

Playlist.com has an article quoting Dan Torres, vice-president for product marketing at Rio, "Apple shipped a somewhat neutered product." He was speaking of the iPod Shuffle. In the interest of full disclosure I ordered one today.

It is amazing that these companies are either so disconnected or just don't get it. Perhaps they have been drinking too much of the podcasting Flavor-aid lately but most users don't want all the junk they're putting on them. Take a look at CD players. How well did CD players combined with FM radios do? Not well.

So as the argument from these companies the iPod Shuffle will fail because it doesn't have a display. They fail to see or understand that if a person wants a display they will spend the extra $100 dollars and get the iPod Mini with a display and four times the capacity. The other companies all sell larger units, some with more features and all with higher price tags. How well does the iRiver hook into the front of your stereo in the car? What about how many batteries you need to pack to keep your power hungry Rio Forge alive for a day.

The amazing thing is that the Rio Forge, for only 10 dollars more have a quarter of the capacity of the iPod Shuffle. Nevermind that to use it in more than one place you'll need your extra cable kits.

At the end of the day Apple will be getting the last laugh... all the way to the bank.

Pages

Subscribe to