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5月28日 Pieces of Me That Exist in the Cloud
Picture taken from here Mobile computing is becoming my newest fascination. My previous fascinations included network based storage, network redundancy, and network security. I enjoy making things do things that they were meant or designed to. This is part of the sould that drives my curiousity to the edge of insanity and teeters over the maw of the great beyond. I think eventually I will completely loose it and tumble into that gaping mouth that will swallow my soul and my body whole. Mobile computing isn’t what it was even 3 years ago, mobile computing by traditional defintion means being able to computer while having the ability to travel. Mobile computing devices were originally laptops, then PDA’s were taking over, now cell phones and custom Internet devices like my N810. The question you need to ask is this still what mobile computing is, or is it being morphed into the new Internet buzz phrase “Cloud Computing”? While I’ve been doing my crossposting series I’ve been thinking about what it truly means to be mobile and to work in the Internet cloud. Ironically there is more to my online activities then my blog and how far reaching I can make the posts go. I have pieces of me that exists in the cloud. Part of this is my blog postings, sometimes this gives you an intimate side of me. There is more that make up who I am and my goal is to see how I can migrate that online so I can access it any time and anywhere I have a net connection and an interface to the online world. I have the basic or myself, my memories in the blog posts. As I go on and digg further in my past more of these will survive through that. What about everythign I create? What about my pictures, my videos, my friends, my documents; will these things always be able to exist in the cloud? While there are methods to storing these data types online, what about when a service goes belly up? If a company goes out of business and you are relying on them with your data, where do you turn? Even the great and powerful Google isn’t immune to canceling a service and dropping your data. How do you stop that? How do you save your data? Is there even a reason for home storage anymore? I can say just typing that out that there will always be a reason for home storage. There will be private documents that you never want to show online. Private thoughts that will always remain yours alone. Until extrememely heavy encryption is ubuiquitous and tied soley to you, there is no reason to trust this data online. If you don’t want ANYONE ELSE to ever see it, keep it away from the Internet. I’m going to start a new blog series that investigates working in the cloud. I know that this has been done before, but I think it will work nicely with my crossposting god series. Why? Because I’m going to focus on data redundancy and survivability in the modern Internet age. I’m going to touch upon security and point out the insecurity that exists that most of us seem to ignore. There are pieces of me scattered in teh clouds, I want some semblance and organization before I run into the hurricane.
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5月27日 The Crossposting God Series Part 5 - Myspace
Picture from here OK, I’ve repeated it a couple times I think I’m ready to actually talk about it. Unlike some other services where I explain the community and the functions, I’m going to refrain from doing that for Myspace. While I do have a myspace account, I won’t say that I truly like Myspace. I haven’t even bothered to give myself the uber l33t cool profile page. It’s a thing, not a good thing, not really a cool thing, just a thing. So if I’m so “meh” towards Myspace why do I post there? Because unfortunately some of my friends haven’t seen the light and still utilize the server. I keep in touch with old gaming friends there especially, so I feel I want to broadcast my information there as much as I do anywhere else. I’ll tell you what though, it isn’t easy. Myspace may proclaim new found openness, yet getting information into Myspace without using their tools is a pain in the butt. There are three things you can do remotely to update Myspace and keep your friends up to date on you.
RSS Widgets: For any site that allows you to place a widget into your profile, and does not allow you any remote options to any other functions, RSS widgets allow you to bypass the whole “you can’t put our data in our service unless you use our tools” wall. While Myspace is getting better, it still wants you to play with it’s tools. If you do a search for RSS widget “Service Name” in Google you shuold be able to pick and choose the one that is right for you. By editing your Myspace profile and putting your embed code into your profile, you should be able to display the news feed you want right there on your profile page. While this is all fine and dandy it doesn’t really cover what a crossposting god wants to accomplish, so let’s move onto some of the other options. Status Updates: Your status updates, the “I’m in my room crying cause Kurt Cobain is still dead” status updates that you use on Myspace if your an aging emo kid, these can be done remotely. By utilizing service such as Ping.fm and Hellotxt you can update this via instant messenger or my choice, my Twitter account, without ever logging in. You can do this by creating an account on Hellotxt or Ping.fm and they will give you an email address in which you can notify them of your current status. We’ve discussed on ways to utilize e-mail notifications for use with other services, now you know the gateway to updating your Myspace status message. Blog Posts: Blog posts are the final achievement of the crossposting god when it comes to Myspace, unfortunately I only have a solution for Wordpress users. There is a plugin called MySpace Crossposter that will send your post over to your Myspace blog when it receives a publish event notification. To get some of the information in configuring this plugin (it’s one of the most pain in the butt) you will have to open up your wp-config.php file to get the accurate information. The options to program this plugin are as follows: Database Settings: These options will be automatically configured in future versions of the plugin. Most of the data is available in your wp-config.php file if you need to reference it.
Blog Information: These options will be automatically configured in future versions of the plugin.
Myspace Login Credentials: Without these, you won’t be able to crosspost.
Post style: Choose “notification” or “full story”.
Because of longer posts like this one won’t show up in the myspace blog I just have it setup to post a notification of a new blog post, this also allows me to see how often I get hits from my Myspace blog (not often I’ve either unloved or uninteresting). If you have further questions on making this all work together, please drop a comment below. The next chapter in the crossposting god series is going to be on RSS feeds and making them work for you in broadcasting your information across the blogosphere in a controlled manner.
Picture from here Previous Entries in The Crossposting God Series:
Related posts5月25日 Going to the Drive-InOriginal URL: http://creeva.com/2008/05/25/going-to-the-drive-in/
Tonight Xie and I went to the drive-in. The drive-in, America’s greatest past time decades ago. We were driving looking for a used computer store (which we never found) and stumbled across this drive-in. WIthin driving distance there are three drive-ins that we know about, this one happened to be playing the new Indiana Jones movie and Iron Man, neither of which we had seen. We killed time for a couple of hours and got there just as the line was forming. We did sneak in some food, but also bought beverages and candy from the concession stand. The admission was 5.00 and I thought that was a decent price, hence hte concession stand purchases. There has always been something special about the drive-in for me, my parents took me there quite a bit as a kid. I remember defintely seeing The Last Star Fighter and Ghostbusters at the drive-in with my parents, and as a teenager I went to quite a fwe more shows. There is somehting about having the freedom to talk, smoke, or make noise and watch a movie. If you get a chance make sure you get to your local drive-in, it’s a dying item in the world we live in now.
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5月24日 Hackintosh FailureOriginal URL: http://creeva.com/2008/05/24/hackintosh-failure/
So last night I did try to turn my laptop into a hackintosh, and it didn’t turn out so well. After installation I seemed to have an issue with my video not working (ironic that it works for the installation screens). I futzed with it for awhile and since have given up on it. I’m willing to work around issues and change my methodogy to do something becuase I’m not using it the way it’s supposed to be used (part of the mantra of everything I do - My old home network used to have 16 PC’s on it). I can only go so far in futzing before it’s more a nuisance and get’s in the way of getting things done. After following the Kalway steps that should have enabled to work, I relented and went back to Ubuntu Hardy Heron 64 Bit - a fresh install (plus the addition of 2 GB of ram) has mad it more “peppy” then it was before. I guess my next step will be working on getting VMware working so I can get the couple windows programs (Finale) that I want to work with running on my laptop. One great thing about a fresh install is that Ubuntu detected my wireless NIC right away - that took a couple hours to get working when I first installed Gutsy Gibbon. Xie had been having issues with Vista and we salavaged her data and loaded Ubuntu on her laptop as well. She remarked to me that it seemed to simple. I explained how complex do you need your operating system to appear? We’ll see how it goes with her, if she likes it, and if she’ll stick with it. She has become a bit more like me in the belief of the cloud computing dream and as long as the browser functions as well she’ll learn to work around everything else. I can say that I did have mixed feeling migrating to OSX since I wouldn’t be able to test Gnome Conduit anymore (except the N810 port), which would make it alot harder for me to work on documentation. Regardless it seems I’m now a linux for life type of guy, though it’s not like I don’t have an XP desktop 5 feet away from me, a 2k3 server in a basement, a first gen mac mini in the next room hooked to the TV, and my work assigned Mac Book Air next to this laptop. Maybe since the N810 is linux based I should have done a BSD on this laptop? I do think I’m very comfortable switching between OS’s and machines.
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5月23日 Tonight I'm Trying To Make My Laptop A Hackintosh
So most you know that I was running Ubuntu Hardy Heron, but during some patching I hit some data corruption that caused my laptop to go all screwy. The first thing I noticed was the touchpad stopped working. Um….ok. Then I was getting errors on boot up, more or less when I logged in some packages kept crashing and wouldn’t restart. Upon trying to fix and reinstall packages I managed to loose gnome and then I couldn’t do anything. I did manage to get into the laptop last night with a Hardy Heron live DVD, after getting i I setup an FTP server and managed to save everything I cared about in my home directory. With this migration and the thought that I’m going to have to reinstall Linux anyways (yes I could sit down for more hours and repair the ubuntu installation, but I’m originally a windows guy I’ve saved my data it’s quicker at this point to format/reinstall), that I would try to get OSX working on my laptop. I have heard with the Intel GMA video driver there is some mouse artifact issues, but I didn’t notice any problems when I booted up the install DVD (this was when I was trying to decide my course of action and before I saved the data). Since I’ve read that the wifi works now, and the toushpad and audio should work, I don’t really give a care to the fact that the built in web cam might not work. I’ve been using my work Mac Air most the time at home and figured it is time to take a plunge to try to go more OSX based. I’m going to try to dual boot between OSX and Ubuntu, but I think that’s mostly to stick around for gnome conduit since that’s the only unique app worth me sticking around for. I do have it running on my n810 and I’ll still have linux on there, so I’m it’s not like I’m running. It’s like I’m experimenting around. So after I’m done I’ll let you know how successful I am.
Related posts5月22日 The Crossposting God Series Part 4 - Entry, Distribution, and End PointsOriginal URL: http://creeva.com/2008/05/22/distribution-and-endpoints/
Photo From Here When we think about crossposting, it actually is more in depth then most people think. From a very simple level you go from one site to another. At a higher level though you are publishing from a single source to tens if not hundreds of places. Used correctly crossposting is a very publishing tool that lets you gain readers very cheaply (or free), as long as you are willing to login to all of these other sites to maintain readers and communities. If you are not willing to login to all these remote services and address comments, suggestions, and criticisms; then crossposting is not for you. There are three different functions in a crossposting architecture. These functions include your entry points, distribution points, and end points. You could also add filtering points but utilizing services like yahoo pipes, but for the moment that is out of scope of this discussion (for the moment). Each of these steps is important and you need to make sure you don’t get them screwed up or you can be in for one heck of a data cleanup time. Data entry points are areas in which you interact, create, and start your data. In my example if I wanted to put up an audio or video post to my blog I would use Utterz. With Utterz I can be on the road and pick up my phone, record a post, and it automatically gets posted and disseminated throughout my network. If I have a picture I want to share I normally upload it to Flickr and the chain starts all over again at that scale. Via SMS I can insert a quick status update to twitter and alert everyone following me and change my status across many network (I also do this via IM). For longer written posts I normally start at my own main blog. It just feels write to actually write this and start with my blog (though other blogs I may write an article on will eventually make it back here). Distribution points (which in some cases double as end-points in my design) are sites or services that pull in data (or has data pushed into it) and at that point sends the data off to another service. In my architecture sites that can resend data out via e-mail (such as blogger) become major distribution points for me. You have the ability to resend out up to 10 e-mails to other services from blogger. Another major distribution service for me is feedburner, this allows me to shape and filter me RSS feed and push this data out to other services either via widgets or into services that can import in RSS feed data directly. End points are the sites or feeds in which your readers are actually interacting with you at. It’s where they are reading and processing your information. It’s where comments are given and it’s where your data actually has meaning has come to rest. Some end-points may seem useless in your overall architecture (and yes when you become a crossposting god it is architecture), but how much is the one or two readers worth that may discover you through that service? Normally it takes only a couple minutes to setup a profile on a new service and set your data in place once it starts from it’s entry point. If you can’t automate this you need to decide if it’s worth the time to copy and paste the data across. To me, if I have paste data into an end-point manually, then it’s not worth it to me. Everything has to be done automatically. In the beginning of this article I mentioned that you need to make sure you don’t confuse a role in your architecture. The reason you need to be aware is that you have a chance of regurgitating the same data over and over again across all of your end points. When this happens the clean up is horrendous and can take anywhere from hours to weeks. The amount of effort you put in is relative to how much you care about that extra data hanging out on your end points. The more popular and feedback you get from an end point the more care, feeding, and presentation care you should put into it. In the crossposting god series part 5 we’ll be covering myspace. Previous Entries in The Crossposting God Series:
Related postsNerd vs. Geek vs. DorkOriginal URL: http://creeva.com/2008/05/22/nerd-geek-dork/
Picture from here Today I read a comment on slashdot that inspired me to write on this subject. The comment was written on the Secret History of Star Wars article and was given by Omestes and was as follows:
Now this has been written about hundreds of times (if you don’t believe check google), but wanted to stick my two cents into this discussion. Let’s go over my own defintions:
Picture from here Dork: A dork is an invidual that has an interest in something in so far that they are singled out and people believe because of some title given to them they are thought to be an expert. In all actuality they are no better then a lay person and has the largest social anxieties and problems dealing with others. They normally think they are smarter then they are, but yet normally lack in depth knowledge to move them up the dork/nerd/geek ladder. However there is a missing factor to this definition, that is the fact that a dork is more likely to be the one that non dorks/nerds/geeks are most comfortable around. They are the ones that come off lovable - like when your friends or significant other says “You big dork”. While in some terms dork is an insult, when you properly it is definitely the least offensive to the general population at large.
Picture from here Nerd: Nerds are the individuals that have an interest in things the goes so far that not only do they have to prove tehy are better then everyone on the subject of interest, they also are so intensely interested in there area of focus that social situations really don’t bother them. It’s a waste of time for them. They don’t know why you don’t want to dig into replicating a hologram in your microwave with tin foil and baking soda, which they do daily for amusement.
Picture from here Geek: Geeks usually can deal with society the best, but completely zone out similar to nerds to nerds, but are normally capable of human relationships, though they took the hologram in the microwave and made a short film out of it to upload to youtube. They are interested in the obscure and bringing it into fruition. Normally geeks wear the term geek on themselves with a badge of honor.
Me and my grandparents - Years Ago (Years and Years) I can say in certain areas I’m all three, but I’m mostly a geek. I’m normally quite knowledgable in the things I have extreme interest in, and i’m capable of zoning out. Most of my family considers me a nerd when it comes to social networks (and I really am when it comes to crossposting). When it comes to certain items and gadgets I’m definetly a dork trying to be a geek. Wait what am I saying I was a pimp, I don’t know why I’m sticking myself into any of these groups. You don’t believe me? Behold Creeva with a mullet (once again many years ago):
So which do you identify with and what is your definitions?
Related postsThe Crossposting God Series Part 3 - Live Journal and Derivative SitesOriginal URL: http://creeva.com/2008/05/22/crosspost-livejournal/
Live journal is another online blog that focuses on community. While it is not as active and communal as Vox, it is infinitely more focused on true interaction between users compared to Myspace, Facebook, or any other of the more traditional collect as many friends as you can pokemon style social network. I can say that in rankings of comments and feedback I get back from readers that my live journal is only to third to my vox and my main blog in terms of interaction. Live journal has been so successful that there are derivative sites that use the live journal engine, the steps listed below should allow you (with some tweaking) to post to any of those sites as well. I really wish I could say that I had options for you to crosspost to live journal from Vox or Blogger, but currently unless you have a paid account you won’t be able to use the post by e-mail method I mentioned in the Vox article. If you do however wish to use a method and have a paid live journal subscription the steps are similar to the steps in the vox article.
Since my main blog is wordpress I of course us a plugin to facilitate the crossposting - LiveJournal Crossposter to be exact. When wordpress 2.5 was released there was some issues with this plugin, but it’s since been updated and corrected. To configure this plugin you do the following steps. 1. Download and install the plugin 2. Activate the plugin in your wordpress installation on your plugin tab 3. Go to your settings tab and click on the live journal option 4. Fill in the following options:
That gives you the most basic configuration of this plugin, however unlike many other wordpress plugins that would end there, livejournal crossposter gives you a myriad of more options. Here are a few more things you can tweak:
I think livejournal crosspost should be a benchmark plugin for all other crossposting plugins to come. You can crosspost to live journal from other services, such as Utterz or Ping.fm - and I’ll be covering the Live Journal crossposting functions from those sites when I get to those articles. The next article in the series will cover the difference between crossposting endpoints and crossposting distribution points. Previous Entries in The Crossposting God Series:
Related posts5月21日 The Crossposting God Series Part 2 - Vox
Vox is a blog community that really focuses on the community aspect. When Xie first started blogging on vox I kind of poo pooed it. However I didn’t find some people that I knew from SWG that posted there, ever since I can tell you it is definetly a close knit community. Since I’m a crossposter I’m kind of on the outside, but I reply to comments and Oh My Yod! is a blog I visit every other day. Vox is one of the easier services to crosspost to since it allows post by e-mail. To enable posting by e-mail go through the follow steps: 1. Go to your account settings 2. Go to mobile settings - here you can get your moblog address (which you can post to from any e-mail address) and the settings you wish to apply to it. 3. Setup your account that you are crossposting from (which can be any service that sends out emails) There are two services I can recommend that you can use to post to Vox with (or bridge across with more on that around part 18), these are Blogger or a custom wordpress installation.
For Blogger: 1. Go into your blog’s settings 2. Go to your emai tab 3. Paste your Vox moblog email address 4. Now any post that goes to your Blogger account (I’ll talk about crossposting to blogger in a later thread)
For Wordpress 1. Download a plugin that allows for publishing via e-mai ( I use DJ EmailPublish) 2. Go to your settings page and configure the plugin pasting in the Vox moblog address 3. Save and apply settings 4. Now any post that goes up on your wordpress account crossposts over to your vox account. In part 3 I will be covering crossposting to live journal, so I hope to see you then. Previous Entries in The Crossposting God Series:
Related postsDoes Our Desktop Anti-Virus Protect Us?
Recently at work there was a security incident where a worker was tricked into loading malware on their machine. I was asked if your desktop antivirus solution fully protected us against this. While I’m sure most people that read my articles are aware of the answer I gave I thought I would share it with you (some parts have been rewritten from the original email) While our desktop antivirus solution does detect malware, spyware and virii vectors into the machine, the vendor needs to release definitions to make sure it can detect it. Due to the fact that we don’t have the name of the spyware in question I can’t verify whether the vendor has the definitions loaded to detect this particular piece of software. The problem with spyware and malware in general is the fast moving vector in which it changes code, when the code the definition was written for changes even slightly usually they won’t be able to detect it. Our desktop solution does include heuristics to detect malicious activity done by a software program, but this only goes so far. Researchers and malicious code writers have even turned this into a game - http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/04/28/Security-vendors-slam-Defcon-virus-contest_1.html. Without knowing all the steps included I think that the vendor did not have the definitions for this particular attack. Not only would it have to bypass the desktop virus scanners, it would have had to bypass the web filters if it came via a web page, the mail servers scanners if it came in via e-mail, also possibly any network scanners andmail gateway scanners that we may utilize. Protecting from malicious software will always be a moving target that there will never be 100% protection against. There are things that can be done to minimize it’s effects: 1. Layered security - scanning at the desktop, proxies, mail servers, mail gateways, and virus and IDS at network level - these can help detect known attack vectors and suspicious activity. 2. Vista - not something some people want to hear, but from a Windows perspective with the UAC (User Access Controls) it makes it more difficult for malware to get a foot hold into the operating system. This is much more effective on machines where the users do not have administrative rights to their machines. While machines with Linux and OSX operating systems are essentially immune to virii ( there is more virii added to Windows AV Definition files in a week then have ever been discovered for these operating systems) there are not immune to all malicious software. 3. Machine policies - group policies initiatives that lock down the machine lower the surface area that this malware can attack. Requiring users to only go to trusted sites and disabling unsigned active-X controls go a long way to minimizing these type of attacks from vectors outside of the just e-mail concerns. 4. User education - the more educated a user is, and the more conscious of the possible repercussions of their actions the less this type of attack happens. While even all of these will never have 100% coverage combined gives the desktops the best chance of detecting these types of threats.
Related postsThe Crossposting God Series Part 1 - The Introduction
I’ve mentioned in passing in the past that I do crosspost across the interwebs. I’ve stated before, yet I’ll mention it again for this series that I do it so readers can access me where they want. Yesterday I posted that I was making it a goal of mine to see how many possible services. Since I’m doing this I figured that could I get my information to my readers on how to do this, the why is a little toughter to answer. While this information could theoretically be used for spam blogs, I’m in the sincere hope that you do it to keep in touch with your friends. Crossposting did start out as keeping in touch with friends in other services so I didn’t have to login into them. Very truly there are only a handful of web services that I truly interact with, I’ll leave comments or talk to users when I actually do login, but the path where I create original content on is quite narrow. My blog (where you may be reading this) of course is my primary outlet where I write, the secondary service I use incessantly is twitter. Pictures and movies of course have a completely different avenue of entries into the interwebs, but I do so much more when it comes to text. Through the course of this series I will be covering text, video, audio, and meta data crossposting. Later today I will be starting with crossposting to Vox and from there I’ll write an article per service, there will be some overlapping on techniques to get data into a service, but I won’t be using the same technique on the same day. So if I use e-mail crossposting as a method, the next will be either RSS entry or a helper site. I won’t be releasing all of my secret sauce, but just enough of it so you should be able to figure out the missing pieces for yourself.
Related posts5月20日 Statcounter LamentionOriginal URL: http://creeva.com/2008/05/20/statcounter-lamention/
I think I finally got to the point that statcounter is completely useless for me. Now I’m rolling thruogh the max log size of page views faster then I can actually read them. If I don’t read them they are lost forever. I’m too much of a cheapskate to actually pay for their service (maybe if I actually made money at this I would consider it. Checking stats mutiple times a day to actually get the data you want to read isn’t very efficient. I will say compared to google analytics or wordpress.com’s stat plugin that statcounter’s only really shining feature was the recent page load activity. If either of the other services I used actually used that it would be alot easier to dump. Regardless I think I’m leaving Statcounter by the end of the month. I’ll miss you Statcounter, you just can’t grow with me.
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Curse You Code MonkeyOriginal URL: http://creeva.com/2008/05/20/curse-you-code-monkey/
So I was leaving for a smoke break and I had my headphones in, I just listened to a TWIT episode 133 which featured Jonathan Coulton the musician who released the song “Code Monkey” back in 2006. I happened to have it on my N810 and I was just going to get up for a smoke break. I started the song and reaction hit me, I almost starting singing it out loud - not just out loud, I was going to sing it very loudly. I caught myself. I had the feeling where your vocal codes start to open up and your ready to let a sound loose, well I didn’t hear it by I would assume I probably let loose a gurgle out of throat, it may have been too far gone down the pipeline to shut it off completely without leakage. Now I’m sure Xie is reading this slightly amused, to finish off the picture I on the way out of the building I was doing my little dance type walk. I’m not a teeny bopper anymore (well compared to most people here I’m sure I seem that way), but a guy in his thirties doing a jerky little head bopping dance while he’s walking out of the office is sure to garner some attention. So far though no one has said anything. The best thing I can offer you is to not listen to “Code Monkey” in your office. I do suggest you check out Jonathan’s site for more of his great music though. I’ll leave you with the “Code Monkey” WoW music video.
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What Wordpress Plugin's Do I Use?
For those curious which wordpress plugin’s I use on creeva.com, I thought I would post my plugin page for you to check out.
Enjoy:
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Cyborg Name DecoderOriginal URL: http://creeva.com/2008/05/20/cyborg-name-decoder/
The above is what I got while pumping Creeva through the Cyborg Name Decoder. Thanks to Leah Culver’s Link on Pownce I discovered this site. Now to be fair I also pushed through my real name:
Head over and let me know what your Cyborg name is decoded as.
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5月19日 New Ping.fm Beta CodeOriginal URL: http://creeva.com/2008/05/19/new-pingfm-beta-code/
I received a recent comment that the Ping.fm beta code that I posted a few weeks as since expired. So looking up on ping.fm it seems that a new beta code has been announced. The new beta code for everyone to use is “pingsauce” - someone drop me a comment if it stops working again and I’ll try to track down the latest one.
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Is is Possible to Out Scoble the Scobleizer?
What do I mean by out Scoble, Scoble himself? I’m not going to make as much money as he does, I’m not going to get as many followers as he does, and I’m not going to ever get to play with all the toys he does, and I’ll never have his connections. So how am I going to out do him? Data distribution. Last week someone asked me how I distribute my data across the Internet, at first I grabbed a piece of paper. After starting the diagram I realized it was way too inefficient in space requirements, so I moved on to a piece of poster board. After I had a rough diagram I was told I must surely be kidding. I assure you when it comes to my blog I never kid, and don’t call me Shirley. After relaying this story to a friend he said he would be interested in how I distribute my data. So I put this challenge on myself, to come up with an accurate diagram of how I push my data, and include passive inclusion in sites like google at the same time. The goal is to see how much data I truly generate with each post. Instead of just ramping up to include everything I’ve joined so far I’m taking it up a notch. I’m going to seehow truly far I can push the envelope on passing this data and making it grow. Sort of a tsunami of Internet data. I will only have one account per service and stick with their own functionality, I won’t do any data passing manually, nor will I use a second account (since that’s cheating). If I managed to spam my data to 5000 twitter accounts who would subscribe to any of them? No one, so I have to take the point of view I’ve always stated, this is about distributing data to my friends no matter what service they are on. It’s kind of the opposite of data portability, so with that in mind I’m calling this the data pushability project. I’m going to continue until July 1st to see how many services that I can link, crosspost, and pull in unique data from that either I create or I theoretically own (comments to my posts I have a stake in and much as my del.icio.us bookmarks). I want all the sites to automatically handle the data and use tools provided to me by web services. I’m targetting social networks and the like, but my friend asked me what am I going to do when the social network craze is over. I explained that this is more proof of concept and Internet distribution. Those are the factors that ring my bell, the friends and popularity contest really aren’t my driving factor. Getting my stuff read, that’s what I want. I don’t care if you friend me or not. So look forward to a diagram the first week of July that shows how far data can really be pushed in todays Internet era.
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NASA's Glenn Research Center's Open HouseOriginal URL: http://creeva.com/2008/05/19/grc/
On Saturday Ghoulishcharm, Xie Lanthia, and myself went to NASA’s Glenn Research Center Open house celebration. They were throwing this in celebration of 50 years of NASA. We had been planning to go for a few weeks and we managed to make it. This is out of the realm of normality for us. Xie and I woke up early (for a Saturday) and got around taking care of the pets, eating a snack, and getting out the door surprisingly well. We actually left when we were planning on leaving. We drove an hour to go pick up Ghoulish and proceeded on the hour drive to NASA, all three in a Miata (don’t ask but I can say it involved clowns and midgets). At the halfway mark we stopped at Wal-Mart in Oberlin to take a stretch and compare prices with some stuff we were considering buying online. At this point Xie realized that she forgot her wallet. Normally this wouldn’t be a big deal, but we needed government issued identification to get into NASA. Since we were a half hour from home we boogied back down there to get her wallet. While there I managed to snarf down half a peanut butter sandwich, a bag of chips, a candy bar, and half a Pepsi (meals for the road time warrior). After a nice stretch we all greased up and squeezed into the car again. We took the highway north this time and about half way there was a tremdous down pour. At this point we were considering that this whole fiasco may be a bad idea. We proceeded and decided we would play it by ear. We made it to the Cleveland I-X center where designated parking was and it slowed to a drizzle. We decided that the sky looked like it was clearing up and we would continue on this expedition. After going through the ID checkpoint we were instructed to wait for the next shuttle bus to take us onto the base. While waiting there a torrential downpour happened and we all got partially soak trying to stand underneath the overhang, but not trying to crowd people to much. Politeness versus being wet, the ultimate conundrum. After about ten minutes we were on the bus and driving over to the base. The first open building we wandered into turned out to be kid activities, no good. We wandered real quick to see if anything interesting was in there and there wasn’t. Moving on. The next round was trying to find bathrooms. There was porta potties, but none of us really like porta potties. We were at NASA we wanted to use astronaut restrooms. We migrated to the visitor’s center and managed to score normal every day bathrooms. I didn’t get to pee like an astronaut through, *sigh*. On a side note could you imaging the red neck shuttle that would actually have a porta potty in it? Ewwwwww. After the visitors center (Which had a Skylab capsule) we wandered into the wind tunnel, which can generate wind at three times the speed of sound. We saw the NASA bike. We went to the zero gravity research center (it’s really a big hole in the ground) and then decided it was break time. We hit the NASA cafeteria, ironically in the actual cafeteria nothing is freeze dried. We had had pop and a banana that cost a total of 6.00. I think I could get a better deal in NYC. Our feet were getting tired so we decided to skip some of the other buildings and just hit the hangar. In the hangar was a few proto type planes and battling robots. I guess the local high school robotic competition was happening that day in the hangar. There was also an inflatable life size replica of the Gemini capsule, bigger then I thought it was. Ghoulish managed to get in a discussion with someone at NASA over Pluto. We always thought Pluto got the bum rap, “The planet Pluto has become the planetoid plute”, what? It didn’t get smaller? Why did we have to change is designation. I guess the EU agrees with us. THe EU is voting to reinstate it as a planet, Americans don’t get the right to say what a planet is or isn’t. GO PLUTO! After the hangar we got back on the shuttle bus and headed back to the car leaving NASA for the day. In two weeks we are are heading out to NASA’s Plum Brook center to see the world’s largest vacuum chamber. Xie wants to go inside, but I dont’ think they will let her. Ghoulish will continue his hunt for space monkeys, though he swears they are hidden away at Glenn Research Center. So there are no space monkeys, no floating in anti gravity, and no freeze dried food in the cafeteria. We had an enjoyable time and brought home some NASA swag to boot. See you in two weeks NASA I also made a Flickr Album of all the pictures I took.
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Death of the CD Single?Original URL: http://creeva.com/2008/05/19/death-of-the-cd-single/
A friend and I had a discussion about old technology disappearing and what gets lost in the migration. He put forth of the example of the CD single. I stated that the CD single was still around, he stated that it had completely disappeared. We were both right and wrong. He wanted to take me up to the challenge on if they still existed. My problem is that I chose the wrong store. We were at the mall following this discussion and went into a Fye Store. After browsing (and I had almost forgotten about the previous discussion) my friend asked the sales lady if they had any CD singles. She stated they were no longer made since the Internet destroyed that market. I pointed out some recent bands that released singles and she just kind of shrugged and wandered away. Score one for him. What I should have done is gone to the record exchange which deals more in specialized markets and not bulk selling fluff. I’ll concede greatly that the CD single is no longer a mass purchased item (I never purchased one in my life since singles back in the day were half the cost of a full CD). I won’t concede that they are disappearing just yet. I have argued with others before that media will all become digitally distributed. Physical media will disappear as the main stream item and move into the arena of niche collectors. Digital media will become the de facto standard once broadband is ubiquitous across the nation. The problem with the previous statement is that we currently live in a society that has niche collectors and broadband is not ubiquitous. The people in middle america that has last mile broadband issues do not buy their music on itunes any more then they stream their video on hulu. If I’m a huge Weezer fan, I want that b-side track. These things will drive the single market steadily for at leas the next few years. Searching Amazon there are a ton of CD singles announced and not yet released. This covers those markets, granted it’s more for the specialized collectors at that point over the itunes barrier, but plenty of people will still purchase them at their local store. I do wonder if the price has dropped though? CD singles won’t exist forever, but I’m fairly positive they will hang on as long as CD’s do. The question is which will disappear first, the compact disc or the modem? That is an interesting technological discussion. If you ask me though, I think the compact disc will die first.
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Late NightOriginal URL: http://creeva.com/2008/05/19/late-night/ I’m off to bed, but tomorrow I’ll be writing about the NASA open house we went to on Saturday, until then I wish everyone a goodnight.
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