jtnt://life/unedited

Gravedigger

Is it just me, or does the silhouetted man in the new Dave Matthews video for Gravedigger bear some resemblance to the recently departed Man in Black, Johnny Cash? I know the video was probably conceived and produced long before Cash's death, but it is a bit eerie nonetheless.

Canon Digital SLR for under $1000. *Drool.*

Oh my. OH my! OH MY!! My beloved Canon has done it this time. They've announced the first digital single lens reflex camera that to retail for under a grand.

At $900 USD, the EOS 300D doesn't offer the metal body of the EOS 10D, and it offers much few image control settings, but it does save you 600 smackeroos.

I love my tiny Powershot S230 too much to part with it, but I might just have to sell one of my old EOS film cameras to help finance this little guy. It's almost too hard to resist! We'll see what the Erickson Barnett Santa puts in my stocking this holiday season. I'll just have to drool until then.

Shiver me timbers! Me day has arrived!

Lest ye forget, it's Talk Like A Pirate Day. Arrr!

BitTrickle*

I am currently on a BitTorrent swarm that has 182 complete seeds going and 33 other active downloads. My speeds should be blazing, right? Not exactly. They're hovering in the 3k/sec range. BitTrickle, indeed.

Are all those "experimental" clients that allow people to set their upload speed to minimal amounts (without really affecting download speed much, I've tested it out) to blame? I hope not.

Update: I'm now hovering at around 12-20k/sec. A marked improvement. But certainly lower than what I would expect for such a popular swarm.

* No relation to Dick.

More Launch.not

Marty has picked up the ball on the Launch.not browser-detection ugliness and confirmed that the Launch.not video does indeed play on IE 6 on Windows. Shocker.

Following up on this test and doing my own due diligence, I present the following.

IE 5.2

Camino 0.7.0

Omniweb 4.5

Opera 6.02

Success? No. the video never showed. Moreover, when I refreshed the page, I was greeted with the ever-popular:

In the interest of completeness, I decided to run a BrowserCam job to see what the Windows and Linux browsers were up to. Not much, it seems.

I ran and re-run the job a few times and got the same result each time. I have to assume that the video would have played on those displaying "Load a plug-in you don't have" dialog boxes.

I have to hand it to Yahoo, the parent of Launch. Their Launch.com System Requirements page tells the truth on what to expect from Macintosh browsers.

Still, it seems that the core application that runs the video is Windows Media Player. This is all one should really need, if only one was given the opportunity to download a streaming file with an external app — like everybody else does it! If they don't, they should.

Neither snow nor rain...

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.

Launch.com won't.

Surfing around while trying to find something else to look at besides hurricane Isabel coverage, I came upon a link to view a new Dave Matthews video on Launch.com. I click said link, get get this:

Now, there are all kinds of things that are striking about this "ERROR!" message. As you can see from my browser interface, I am using Safari, not any flavor of Netscape. But let's excuse this, since Safari does identify itself with as a Gecko browser.

The beauty is that I get this error even when I set Safari to report that I am using MSIE version 6. Now, I can't test this right now, but I am certain that if I was using the most popular (by default) browser in the world, this video would launch properly. There's no way Launch.com could survive if IE 6 users couldn't see their stuff.

I have no real conclusion here. This is just another fine example of bad web development or design or whatever bucket you want to put this into. It's just bad, ok? It's a simple example of yet another awful browser-detection script gone awry.

Why do I need Launch.com to protect me from myself. Can't I at least try to get it to work? At the very least, a link to continue regardless of the error should have been included.

Silly Launch.com, browser detection tricks are for kids.

Update: The reason switching the User Agent Safari reports doesn't work is because the link pops up a new window, which defaults to reporting itself as Safari again.

This doesn't excuse the behavior of this site. Just offers a bit more explanation.

More Pirate Talk? Really? Arrr.

What's with all the pirate-related blather going on around the blog world? Honestly, I just posted that Talk Like a Pirate Day link, because I randomly found it somewhere one day. I had no pre-existing obsession, or even thoughts in the slightest, on pirates.

I saw Tony's mention of pirates awhile ago, but now Webcrumbs points me to yet another blog on pirate-speak. I really can't comprehend how this is happening.

I'm glad this third site is not local to the DC Metro area. I'd think it was something in the air, and I would truly be frightened.

I just have one thing to say about all of this: Yes, that is a hornpipe in my pocket and I am happy to see you.

Lord Martimus: Dark Master of the Evil Kingdom of CSS Dropdown Menus

I would be remiss if I didn't make mention of the site of one my co-workers, Marty, who's definitely fighting the good fight on the CSS "DHTML" dropdown menu battlefield.

The bitch (see, these things make me curse. They're surely evil!) of it all is that he has worked tirelessly for the better part of a week trying, laboring even, to get these damn (There I go again.) leeches on the peckers (oh my!) of all web developers to work consistently (as much is possible) across all major browsers and platforms. Macintosh users have at least nine browsers to choose from. Granted, we don't test in all of them, but it gives you an idea of the magnitude of the task.

And to say that Mr. Marty has spent a lot of time wrestling with these pocks on the faces of all web sites is not to diminish the man's talent. He's not just a smart guy; he's pure heart. Without that, these zits on the noses of all web users would have beat him down long ago.

So, props to you, Marty. Death to you, dropdown menus. (I can't come up with another silly metaphor. Sorry.)

$1/Gig

I added a big, fatty, 120Gb Seagate Barracuda drive to my machine, Walfredo, today. And when I bought my G4 a couple years ago, I thought the 60Gb drive it came with was big. I'm freaking swimming in hard drive space now.

My only complaint is that it didn't come with mounting screws. On the up side, I now know about 6-32 UNC mounting screws. Joy is mine.

Hurricane Isabel stole all the flashlights!

Hurricane Isabel is currently on track to rape my beloved Outer Banks (although, a few of those monster houses that, as my brother-in-law says, "use every window in the Andersen catalog" could stand to go). Its inland track puts it right over Richmond, then DC/Maryland a short time later. For those that don't know, your's truly is based in Arlington, VA, just outside of DC.

I procrastinated this week-end and didn't go out and get one of those big, flourescent tube, stand-up type flashlights. I finally got around to it today, and this was way too late. The only flashlight of any size I found was a Monsters, Inc. jobby at Home Depot (after visiting Target, CVS, and a local hardware store). While it would be a funny item to have around in general, I felt that a flashlight with Mike from Monsters, Inc. head over the light wasn't the most practical thing to use to find my way around my dank basement should it be flooded and the electricity is out. It would surely keep my spirits up, though.

Dropdown menus are evil. I have proof.

Myself and the other two developers where I work are hot on the issue of ridding all future sites that we develop of those dropdown menus used to "enhance" a website's navigation which seem to be de rigeur since about a year or so ago. Even when they are done with nice and purty pure CSS, they are still the clunky, startling things they always have been.

The HierMenu sample page linked to above shows one of our (and others') gripes with dropdown menus. Looking at the two menus demoed, one has no idea what the menu is going to do. Even I moused over the top example and thought it was broken until I thought to click on it. And I physically recoiled when the menu popped down.

Here are some links to resources that back up our claims that dropdowns are the devil:

IBM DeveloperWorks: "...menus that pop up automatically when the user positions the cursor over a particular item onscreen. Whatever you call them, these things can be so difficult to use that they border on evil."

User Interface Engineering: "Users Decide First; Move Second"

Jakob Nielsen and Marie Tahir speak out. "In fact, many users are startled when they hover over an area of the screen and a new element pops up unexpectedly."

Shorewalker.com: "Once you realise the dangers of flying menus, you have to confront the truly difficult issue of Web site navigation."

Cascading vs Indexed Menu Design: "...Participants selected the Index as their first preference..."

September 11

Why BitTorrent is destined to fail.

Or put more positively, why it will succeed only on a small scale.

BitTorrent, for those that don't know, is a P2P application which you can use to download any file offered by someone with a BT server. The power of BT is that everyone who is downloading contributes to and shares from the collective bandwidth of everyone else currently downloading the same file(s). Even after downloading the file, if you keep the file active, you continue to contribute. This can also be it's downfall.

Yesterday afternoon, for example, I started a download of a live Phish show. A total download of over 900 megabytes. Right off the bat my download speed was a blazing 90kb/s and there were over 25 others downloading the show along with me.

Two hours later only 9 people remained on the download, and my speed had dropped to 9kb/s. Another couple hours later there were only two people still connected.

So, it seems that while speeds were blazing, people hopped on, got the show, and hopped off. Leaving the rest of us who didn't get on so early to struggle through the rest of the download without the assistance of their plentiful bandwidth.

You can see how the value in this P2P model depends on the the collective kindness of the community. Others must, after they have gotten what they came for, give up additional bandwidth (and computer performance, as BT is a resource-hog) for others to use. This, as you can also see from the above, is not something people are so keen to do.

That said, I have currently been downloading a Grateful Dead show with speeds averaging above 90kb/s the whole time. (I'm not trying to contrast the two music communities, but are Dead fans just more altruistic than Phish fans? Maybe just older with longer attention spans.)

Another serious pitfall of BT is that the original source files are taken offline relatively soon after they become available. With FTP, the person running the server simply has to have the FTP server running in the background and have the files residing where FTP users can get to them. With BT, the server admin must actively keep the file in a sort of "state of upload." That is, even if the file remains on the admin's drive forever, if he doesn't have the BT server actively serving that particular file, no one can get to it.

In the world of online music sharing on BT, shows are usually only available for about 2 weeks. It's good for initially getting the files distributed to a few, but not good for providing long-term access to the masses.

This again, is relying on people to take an active role in sharing the files. However, sharing is not something people would do after downloading a file via FTP or the like anyway. With BT, they are at least helping others whether they want to or not while they are downloading the file.

BT, while it is a truly forward-thinking technology, is not ideal. It relies too much on a Utopian model to flourish long-term. Communism doesn't work on the Internet either, I guess.

Disclaimer: I am a huge user and, in current practice, a huge fan of BitTorrent. I have downloaded tens of gigabytes of live music using it, and I hope that I will continue to be able to do so for as long as possible.

I, by the way, am no leech either. I not only leave my downloads open well after I have gotten the complete show, but I also help seed shows through the denance.net BitTorrent server.

Pump up the bass!

NASA announced today that it has detected a sound wave — a pressure wave to be exact — emitted from a black hole deep in space. The figures associated with this finding are astounding.

First, the black hole is in the Perseus galaxy cluster, which is 250 million light years away.

The frequency of the wave is B flat, but 57 octaves lower than a normal B flat played at middle C on a piano. Or, a million billion times lower than the human ear can detect on its own.

NASA has also calculated how long the sound has been playing. You ready for this? 3 billion years! That's got John Cage's Organ²/ASLSP composition beat by a long shot.

Two new to me.

Found out today about b2, a blog tool, that looks to be pretty cool. (The image on their site certainly is.) Supposedly this thingy offers easier customization than MoveableType. Maybe I'll try it out with whatever new design happens.

A post at YayHooray led me to, PositionIsEverything, a site with much good CSS info on it. It always surprises me when I find a new one, after all the looking around I've done. It is especially fortunate when the new ones I find are so helpful and well done as this one.

Enjoy.

Always save old pictures of world famous rock stars.

I've been contacted by VH1 to provide some photographs for an upcoming "Driven" episode on the Dave Matthews Band. I have to admit it would be kind of cool to see those old images on basic cable. We'll see if the price is right.

Blog Blow Up

I've given up on redesigning (really, designing in the first place) this site myself. I've posted a Matchmaker project on k10k.net. Gotten one response, which I'm really excited about. I'm setting my hopes high for what this guy can do, but really anything is better than what I've got.

Here's the ad:

Blogs are old and so are the default templates that come with MoveableType. I need to break out of "default" mode and get something fresher out to the world. Simple, clean, straightforward. Nothing fancy. Just a template design or two - one for blog, one for photo gallery. I can't pay (much), but I can help you with your web projects.

The Honorable Bud Sackowitz

An appeals court today tossed out 111 death sentences on the grounds that they were imposed by judges, not juries, as certain states' laws require. That's not what I came here to talk about.

The case that led to this court's ruling was somewhat of a legal fiasco. One bit of information about the original case was that the judge who issued the ruling was under the influence of marijuana when he did so.

I am not going to try to defend the judge in this matter. I think being under the influence of anything while presiding over any court case is deplorable, much less on a case involving the death penalty.

But this gets me to my main point. I wonder how many judges are under the influence of something while on the bench — namely alcohol? And how often is this either not known (obviously, something that we can never know) or conveniently overlooked?

If it had been discovered that the judge in this case had, instead of taking a hit off a joint, helped himself to a double shot of Dewar's while in his chambers, would it get brought up during this latest coverage? It's meaningless conjecture, I realize, but I would dare say it would not.

I don't really know where I'm going with this, but it just brings up to me the hypocrisy of drug laws in this nation. Regardless of whether you personally enjoy the effects of marijuana or alcohol or not, I don't see how anyone who is OK with the sale and consumption of alcohol can at the same time argue that marijuana should rightfully be illegal.

For that matter, I think tobacco should be lumped into this discussion as well. In fact, I think a discussion of the legality of pot is put in better context with tobacco rather than alcohol. Alcohol — wheat, barley, etc. — needing altering and processing to be made, where as marijuna and tobacco need no such alteration.

I see why the government and society in general would not want to allow the unregulated sale and distribution of marijuana, just as trading in alcohol is highly regulated. What I cannot grasp is why a person cannot choose to grow marijuana for their own (and their friends, possibly) consumption, just as they can with beer or tobacco? What am I missing?

Any high schooler trying their first cigarette can tell you that tobacco is a mind-altering substance. For many, myself included, it made me sick to my stomach most every time I smoked it in the beginning. However, thirteen years later, I'm still smoking it. Now, that's a powerful drug!

I'm getting way off the original path here, (and no I wasn't high when I wrote this, my rambling is natural), but this is an issue that just doesn't fit into my logic structure. I can't figure it out. Therefore, my thoughts are somewhat disjointed. It just sends my brain into a whirl.

I'm hoping writing about it will bring up ideas that hadn't occurred to me before. (Add that to the list of reasons why I do this, I guess. See previous post.)

Why do I do this?

I've been thinking lately my goals for this site. What is the reasoning behind updating this when I do?

Sometimes I see it as simply an online diary. For years, from about the eighth grade until sometime in college, I kept a regular paper journal. I'd write about any random thought that came to my head. As time went on the journal was mostly updated only when a major event occurred in my life, mostly relating to girlfriends.

Sometimes I see it as an historical record of major world events. But for it to truly be this, I'd have to post way more often. I'm much too lazy and out of the loop for it to be comprehensive. Plus, a focus on a certain kind of event would be necessary. Politics. Sports. Technology. Something.

Sometimes I see it as a soapbox. See previous post. I'd have to think that people actually read this at all for this to keep me going on this track, though.

In the end, I do not know why I update this site. As I reach the end of this thought pattern, I do not know why I am posting this very entry. I think I like the notion of an online, permanent, universally accessible time capsule of my thoughts and travels.

As I have done with my paper journals, I think it will be interesting to revisit these old posts years in the future. So, I guess I update this site for my future self. (In which case, it can be all of the above and more.) I like that thought. Completely selfish and utterly harmless to others. I wish more things in life could be like that.

Excuuuse meeee!

Why can't people just say "excuse me?" They don't anymore. I don't know why. They try to squeeze by you, contorting themselves so as to not alert you to their presence. But you always know they're there. Just say excuse me!

And when people do say excuse me, it seems that more often than not it is in a tone that suggests that you are the one in their way. It's more of a, "Move, buddy" than anything else.

This relates to my observance that people don't blink their lights while on the highway to get a slower vehicle to move over out of the fast lane. They prefer to tailgate you or just whiz by you, passing on the right (another pet peeve), which just causes further traffic problems.

Simply blink your lights twice very quickly, so as to not just be blind-lighting the person in front, and wait a few seconds. If they don't move, repeat. If they still don't see you, your only choice is to pass them on the right at that point, but at least give them the chance to move on their own.

I could start a whole traffic-related pet peeves weblog, but I think about it enough when I'm on the road, I don't have the energy to rehash my frustrations once I get home.

Another simple act that would improve the general state of the world is if more people would hold doors open for others more often. And I'm not just talking about for elderly men or pregnant women. Hold a door open for a perfectly healthy, middle-aged man and see how you feel. It feels good. And it feels even better on the off chance that the recipient of your simple act of kindness actually says, "Thank you."

It all boils down to being more considerate. Everyday and in all situations. The world would be a better place if we all took our mother's advice to say, "Please," "Thank you," and "Excuse me" when warranted.