The occasional scrivener

TPN Rock jitters

So it’s Friday, I eagerly look for the the latest TPN Rock show in iTunes. Nada! A timeout! Argh!!

Apparently I wasn’t the only one. But I could get a preview copy from the man himself, and found that Christin Cook makes great music (if not great websites, that one resized my Firefox, a hanging offence but one that I’ll forgive this time).

Anyway, the show will be back on the web shortly.

Posted at 23:52, in the alt category. Comments [0]
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Links for 2005-09-29

• Domebuilder’s Blues Tags: read-later.

Grabbed from my del.icio.us links.

Posted at 19:08, in the links category. Comments [0]
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Coding VBA

The Daily WTF:

At some point in your career as a programmer, you will be tricked into maintaining a VBA (Visual Basic for Applications, aka Word/Excel macros) application. I’d tell you how to get out of it, but I really don’t think it’s possible. All I know is that at some point between admitting to have knowledge of Excel and cursing under your breath while typing VBA, you will be coaxed into giving some “quick help” on a spreadsheet.

Then there follows an astounding example of horrible horrible VBA code, and the replacement: 3 lines.

There were some dangerous moments in the beginning of my current employment when people were nerving themselves to ask me for VBA help, but now I think it’s forgotten. And if it isn’t, I have to hunt down those people and administer more memory suppressants…

Posted at 23:44, in the comp category. Comments [0]
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The great phone conspiracy

Nathan:

Can’t help but think that there’s some conspiracy on the part of phone manufacturers that they keep producing bigger and uglier phones each with a disjoint set of features. I mean why is it that the 8800 has a camera that’s really not up to par with other phones, and doesn’t take memory cards. Yet promotes itself as having music playing capabilities, yet has <40 megs or so of onboard memory?

Every time you find a phone that you like, you find that it’s got some fundamental flaw in its design, that could only have been left out of the feature list out of spite.

So true.

Incidentally, the Sony-Ericsson K750i he picks is a good choice. S-E rule the mid-market between cheap voice-and-text phones and the more expensive smartphones. For many people, those phones hit the spot with a good mix of features (camera, Java support, music playback), small size, and good design.

Posted at 22:49, in the comm » mobile category. Comments [0]
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Gray day

Autumn is finally here with a gray overcast day. The dim sky seems reflected in my fellow-passengers, who all seem ugly or deformed.

Of course, everything is FUBARed at work too. Why not, it’s Monday…

Update: the day didn’t fulfil its awful promise, thankfully.

Updated on Tuesday, 2005-09-27. Posted at 09:48, in the alt category. Comments [0]
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Links for 2005-09-25

• ml_ipod: Love pub lock-ins, Hate the iTunes lock-in. Tags: audio free ipod itunes opensource software tools winamp windows.

Grabbed from my del.icio.us links.

Posted at 22:42, in the links category. Comments [0]
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35

Being born plumb start on a decade was a boon when I was younger, I just had to remember the current year and do some simple arithmetic to find out how old I was, or how old I would be in some time in the future. I remember thinking of the year 2000 as pretty impossibly far away, I’d be thirty.

Well, time marches on as the cliche goes, and here we are, 5 years past the turn of the millennium[1], and I have kept up with its pace, more or less.

I don’t subscribe to the theory that even multiples of ten are the significant turning points in life (20, 30 etc). I read someplace that multiples of seven are more important, and so far, this has been the case (mostly in retrospect, I think). Whether this year will turn out to be some sort of turning point, I don’t know. I doubt it. But I’ve been thinking more and more about the fact that I’m getting older. Mostly this is about the fact that I can’t go back. Student life, single life, unmarried life — that’s behind me. (Hopefully!). So it’s time to knuckle down and accept that life is in front of me, take some more responsibilities, and move on to the next level.

I’ll keep you posted on the progress on that.

[1] counting as common people do, not as pedants.

Posted at 10:02, in the alt category. Comments [1]
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Double whammy?

Immediately after Katrina I wondered what would happen to the US and the world economy if another disaster struck in the US in the months after Katrina. Now we have a category 4 hurricane poised to strike the Gulf Coast again, the freeways are blocked with fleeing vehicles and the oil derivatives exchanges are thinking about staying open for the weekend. Scary. I must remember to fill up the gas tank today.

Update: seems the worst didn’t happen. Good.

Updated on Saturday, 2005-09-24. Posted at 11:16, in the alt » katrina category. Comments [0]
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Crap network

Telia’s UMTS network has become nearly unusable these last few days. I can’t connect to IRC most times, and the web gateway times out a lot. I don’t know if they’re experiencing problems or are having a surge in traffic. I also know it’s no use trying to find info on their site, as it’s really crappy and mostly oriented to suckering people into choosing their service.

This has put a serious crimp on my online lifestyle, but on the other hand, I’m at last making progress with The System of the World.

Update: things seems to have sorted themselves out. Must have been a glitch.

It’s a tribute to what I think of Telia that I immediately suspected that they’d cut internet access (except for HTTP). I wouldn’t put it past them at all. And that raises the question: why am I using a provider that I fear and distrust?

Posted at 09:52, in the comm » mobile category. Comments [0]
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Comments ahoy!

Frank Hecker has enabled comments, lets hope I can emulate him. His plugin is called feedback.

I’ve been posting more and more comments on other blogs lately, so it would be nice to have a reciprocal relationship in this regard.

I’ll be looking at this in my copious free time.

Updated: looks like my time is a lot more copious when I’m doing something I enjoy. Comments are enabled. Moderation is per email. We’ll see how it works out.

Posted at 23:53, in the scrivener category. Comments [1]
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Links for 2005-09-22

• The feedback plugin, an alternative to writeback — new comment plugin for blosxom. Tags: blogging bloxsom comments.

Grabbed from my del.icio.us links.

Posted at 14:50, in the links category. Comments [0]
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WordPress removed

I removed the WordPress installation after reading Natalian’s experience with an earlier version.

As I’m not using it, I don’t want to maintain it security-wise.

Posted at 13:24, in the scrivener category. Comments [0]
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[SvSe] Önskelista 2005

Önskelista för 2005: födelsedag och jul.

• läderfodral för iPod mini
• pannlampa för sängläsning
• något från läslistan
• kavaj-liknande plagg — antingen en snygg modern kavaj eller jeansjacka
• god whisky eller calvados
• biljardkö

Updated on Thursday, 2005-09-22. Posted at 20:27, in the alt category. Comments [0]
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Writing email messages

I had to whale on (some of) my co-workers for sending email messages with empty subjects. For my sins, I have to use Outlook, and the only feature that redeems this piece of crap is the “Conversation” grouping, which gathers messages with the same subject in one place. Of course, an empty subject is not only devoid of content, it gets stuffed into the previous conversation with empty subjects, thus getting lost in the noise.

As far as I’m concerned, you get what you deserve if you don’t write a subject — any subject. And what you deserve is that we ignore your email until you bother us about it. In which case we will honestly say that we can’t bloody find it.

But if you’re feeling chastened, get more cool email-writing tips from this entry at the 43folders blog. Lots of good stuff there.

Posted at 23:52, in the work category. Comments [0]
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Posts in Swedish

I’m thinking about including posts in Swedish in the blog, mostly about politics and local issues that no-one outside our little country cares about anyway. If I do, I’ll prefix the subjects with the string “[SvSe]”, which is a geeky way of saying that the contents of the posts are in Sweden Swedish, and not, for example, Finland Swedish (“SvFi”).

Posted at 10:25, in the scrivener category. Comments [0]
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More iPod stuff

I got a pair of Koss Porta-Pro[1] headphones yesterday. They have a great sound, and there’s the additional bonus of not looking like an iClone when walking about.

Also found a quick way to pause the ‘Pod (when answering a call on the phone, for example) — just yank the headphone cord out of the jack, and playback will pause. This is way simpler than unlocking the hold button and then pressing pause.

[1] Koss’ own site is spectacularly user-unfriendly, you have to register to do anything. Use the price comparison sites instead.

Posted at 13:07, in the comm » mobile category. Comments [0]
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Chakula

Björn came down from Uppsala yesterday and we wandered over to Kungsholmen looking for sustenance. Luckily he remembered a review of an Africa-themed restaurant called Chakula so we headed there. Even luckier they had a table free for us.

We went the whole hog with entrees, main course, and dessert. I had the eponymous “chakula” while Björn chose the swordfish. To this we drank a very nice wine, Morkel Malbec 2003 from Bellevue Estate Wines.

We ended up spending quite a lot of money, but it’s not as if we do this often anyway.

Posted at 10:27, in the alt category. Comments [0]
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iPod thoughts, plus something about converged devices

Russ slams the iPod nano, and Frank disagrees.

As an iPod owner of just a few days, I can finally buy the hype. The device is cool! I love the storage space — no more fiddling around with 256M when you have 6G. The podcast support rocks. (I’ve started to listen to podcasts too, another thing I’ll have to eat humble pie for…) Having a single device that does one thing well — play audio — is really nice.

Itunes sucks, but that’s another matter…

I’ve been using phones with mp3 players since at least 2001, when I got a Siemens SL45. After that, I’ve used the taco as a music phone. And sure, it works, but it doesn’t work as well as an iPod. And if you factor in the cost of the phone and the likely cost of a memory card that can carry enough songs to be competitive with even a small iPod, you’re looking at serious bucks.

A young person in the EU might have a basic phone for voice and SMS, either one they’ve bought themselves or got as a present. An iPod (or other music player) makes a lot of sense in that it’s something you can wish for as a present or save up to. Asking for a hugely expensive phone is not.

Many people in Sweden get mobiles from work. This is something you need to carry anyway, and often it’s some boring model that doesn’t cost a lot. Getting a dedicated music player for your own money makes a lot of sense then too.

Basically, I see phones and PDAs converging. But there’s still a future for a good music playing device like the iPod.

Posted at 16:58, in the comm » mobile category. Comments [0]
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Links for 2005-09-15

• Jabber clients for Series60 and Maemo Tags: im jabber mobile python series60.

Grabbed from my del.icio.us links.

Posted at 10:14, in the links category. Comments [0]
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The good old days

Matthew: Generation VIC20.

Chris: So Dad, what’s a computer science class for at school?
Me: Well, you learn to program there for example.
Chris: Program?
Me: Yes, to write computer programs using a special language.
Chris: You mean like games?
Me: Well, yes I suppose.
Chris: Like Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic?
Me: Umm, no.

Classic.

I guess you could learn a lot by copying source code, even if it was just BASIC spaghetti code. With line numbers.

Posted at 18:33, in the comp category. Comments [0]
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Links for 2005-09-14

• VBScript to create Contacts in Active Directory — needed for ork. Tags: active-directory automation vbscript.

Grabbed from my del.icio.us links.

Posted at 18:21, in the links category. Comments [0]
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Bad car day

Not only was the car flunked in the yearly safety inspection, I also managed to bump into my boss’ Merc when parking.

I was very careful driving home, and got honked at by cab drivers for my pains.

Posted at 18:24, in the alt category. Comments [0]
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Links for 2005-09-13

• R.P. Feynman: Personal Observations on the Reliability of the Space Shuttle Tags: feynman read-later reliability science security space.
• Unison File Synchronizer Tags: backup software sync tools unix windows.
• Using Unison for remote backup Tags: backup network sync tutorial unison windows.
• File Synchronization with Unison | Linux Journal Tags: backup software unison unix windows.

Grabbed from my del.icio.us links.

Posted at 16:57, in the links category. Comments [0]
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Anders Fredriksson

My old university pal Fralle has a blog. We’ve sort of lost contact since he moved back to Örnsköldsvik. Hopefully I’ll get more info now, though the wonders of technology. Nice to see he’s been bitten by the O’Brian bug too.

Posted at 07:45, in the comm » webloggers category. Comments [0]
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Pretty in pink

I got my manly pink iPod Mini today (thanks, Stefan!) I’ve only filled it with 420 songs yet, and I’m looking forward to commuting by subway in the future.

Posted at 15:00, in the alt category. Comments [0]
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Back from Dalarna

Well, we’re back from our kräftskiva (lit. crayfish party, a Swedish tradition) in Sågen, which is in Nås Finnmark in the region of Dalarna.

A lot of crayfish were eaten, a lot of akvavit was drunk, and a good time was had by all. We tried to relive the party feeling of nine years ago, but we’re all a lot older (as witnessed by the three kids L, L, and L, all grown up now and staring at their parents in horror as they disolved into mawkish sentimentality) so we made do with impromptu linedance lessons from M. And no, I did not reprise my infamous naked dance from 1997…

Posted at 23:37, in the alt category. Comments [0]
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Finally

… ordered my examensring (graduation ring) from KTH.

The design is a white band with oak leaves and “KTH” inside two raised bands of red gold. The white band can be platinum or white gold. As my wedding band is white gold, I chose that option. I also chose the thinner band of the two available, because I’m planning to wear it on the same finger as my wedding band. This had the additional attraction of being the cheaper option.

Pics are hard to come by online, I’ll try to post one when the ring is finished.

Posted at 14:43, in the alt category. Comments [0]
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Metablog

I’ve implemented a parallell metablog containing interesting referers for now. I plan on expanding it a bit, but can’t be arsed to re-implement AWstats or something. Basically this was just a perl hacking fix.

Anyway, you can see the results here; login is metablog/metablog. I’ve put it under lock and key to keep the referer spammers out. It goes without saying that this is beta.

Hovering over the referer will get the user agent; over the target URL, the timestamp.

Nice to see the mobile clients, and also the hits from Google’s mobile portal.

I had help in implementing the search term extraction features from Nelson Minar’s searchspy. Kudos to Jim for the pointer!

Posted at 00:33, in the scrivener category. Comments [0]
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Links for 2005-09-07

• Howard Pyle Illustrations - a photoset on Flickr Tags: art illustration images pirates.
• The digital home — Economist.com — a critical look at the future of the “digital home”. Tags: future home hype network technology.
• iTunes Phone As iLame As iExpected — dissin’. Tags: apple hype iphone lame-duck motorola.
• Five things it’s probably better not to do when you’re kind of drunk Tags: been-there-done-that fives.

Grabbed from my del.icio.us links.

Posted at 23:26, in the links category. Comments [0]
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Reader²

Reader² is a del.icio.us for books.

I must say I’m tempted. The network effects would be pretty cool. But it would be yet another thing to integrate into my blog. Doing it with del.icio.us works now, and I guess I could do something like that with this service. But part of the reason I like the reading list setup I have is that it exposes my “wanted” list in a mobile-parseable format. I have it bookmarked in my phone so I can read it if I’m in a bookstore.

As for getting recommendations of new stuff to read, that’s what the New York Review of Books and The Economist are for.

Posted at 21:13, in the books category. Comments [0]
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One of those days…

… where I should have stayed in bed.

Posted at 11:33, in the work category. Comments [0]
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Links for 2005-09-06

• The Tao of Mac - mySQL — mysql lockdown notes. Tags: mysql security setup.

Grabbed from my del.icio.us links.

Posted at 22:28, in the links category. Comments [0]
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From Cape to Cape

Calle sent a tip about a pal of his who made the journey from Cape Town to Nordkap in a 15-year old Land Rover with his wife and 3-month old son. He’s written a book Kapstaden till Nordkap på 333 dagar (in Swedish), which I’m hearby giving some linklove.

My friend Bastian made the journey from Cairo to the Cape some years ago, as did Paul Theroux, but they travelled alone without kids in diapers.

Posted at 16:26, in the books category. Comments [0]
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Snappy!

Wow, the server restart certainly made a difference. The blog is back dynamically.

I’ve been hacking a bit on a way of getting referrer info from my server logs. I’ve written some perl scripts that’ll push them into a “sideblog” where they’ll be organised by date. Due to the extreme hackedness of the code and the desire to avoid referrer spam I’m keeping it under wraps for the time being. Maybe I’ll put out something when it’s a bit more polished.

Posted at 23:49, in the scrivener category. Comments [0]
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Links for 2005-09-05

• Scope of Mobile Web Best Practices — looks like something I have to read. Tags: mobile read-later web-standards.
• Press Your Luck — sad tale of TV gameshow insecurity and greed. Tags: gambling gameshow insecure tv.

Grabbed from my del.icio.us links.

Posted at 17:27, in the links category. Comments [0]
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Series 60 call timer

Some people want to know how long their call has lasted while they are making it. Some have alluded to the lack of such functionality out of the box as “the biggest interface flaw of them all”. (As Jim says in a comment to that post, “If that’s the biggest flaw you can find in the Series 60 interface then I’d say it’s got to be pretty good :-)”.)

It turns out the functionality is included, you just have to turn it on (thanks bob!). Here’s how to do it:

• Open the Log application:

• Open the “Options” menu (left softkey):

• Turn on the “Show call duration” option:

• Done!

Granted, I only know that this works on my 6630, but I’m guessing it’s the same for the 6682.

Updated: you can get screenshots easily with FExplorer.

Posted at 14:46, in the comm » mobile category. Comments [0]
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Static rendering

The blog is running under static rendering at the moment, the response times were horrendous. I don’t know if I’ve pushed through some weird Perl barrier or if the server is feeling poorly. At least RSS feeds seem to be working OK.

Update: server box was rebooted, much snappier now.

Posted at 12:55, in the scrivener category. Comments [0]
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Late

It’s 20 past midnight, Monday tomorrow*, what the hell am I still doing up? Especially as I’ve hit reload on Bloglines too many times already, there’s still isn’t anything new to read.

Random notes:

• The cover of Zevon’s Keep Me in Your Heart with Jose Calderón and Jennifer Warnes rocks
• I’ve already got a CD’s worth of email in my Gmail account
• It should be easy to implement a “latest referrers” feature for this weblog, in the proverbial 3 lines of Perl — if I could be arsed to figure out a regexp for the Apache logs
• Some sort of interface for these kinds of “random notes” would be cool: updateable via mobile phone?
• Schneier critiques Hogwarts security. Whatever next? For what it’s worth, I reckon Sauron made a fundamental mistake in investing all his power in a single, easy-to-lose item.

* Actually, it’s already Monday. The horror.

Posted at 00:24, in the alt category. Comments [0]
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Splendid Isolation

I’m putting tinfoil up on the windows
Lying down in the dark to dream
I don’t want to see their faces
I don’t want to hear them scream

— Warren Zevon

Posted at 23:14, in the alt » katrina category. Comments [0]
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Links for 2005-09-04

• bug tracking software — overview. Tags: bug-tracking programming request-tracking work.
• Open Directory - Computers: Software: Help Desk: Browser Based Tags: request-tracking work.
• [code/misc/fluffydate.html] :: psilandia — humanized dates for blosxom. Tags: bloxsom dates human-readable.

Grabbed from my del.icio.us links.

Posted at 23:05, in the links category. Comments [0]
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Amusement park day

We spent a day at Gröna Lund (warning: Flash) with my sister-in-law’s family. The whole gang was there, and a good time was had by all. We met my cousin too and his son (my namesake), to L’s delight.

I tried the “Extreme” ride, which was less horrible than it looks from the ground. Another highlight was the “Pop-expressen”.

The departure was marred by H and V missing the last kiddie ride of the evening by 5 seconds, sending V into a paroxysm of grief, but by then it was time to go home anyway. SL showed an unusual humane side by letting L ride for free, and also by offering to let off half the passengers at an unscheduled later stop at the central station on the way to the garage.

Posted at 22:19, in the alt category. Comments [0]
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Heavy Weather

The coverage of Katrina reminds me of Sterling’s novel Heavy Weather. Obviously, Sterling himself has made the connection too.

The whole situation is making me pretty glum. It’s really shown a dark side of the United States, a country that’s prepared to spend billions to invade and then “rebuild” a foreign country, but that apparently feels that if its own citizens can’t get out of the way of a hurricane, they only have themselves to blame. Sauve qui peut, indeed.

I thought the whole point of Homeland Security was the security of people in the homeland. But maybe the (black) South isn’t part of the homeland?

Update: none of this was unexpected:

In the aftermath of such a disaster, New Orleans would be dramatically different, and likely extremely diminished, from what it is today. Unlike the posthurricane development surges that have occurred in coastal beach communities, the cost of rebuilding the city of New Orleans. dramatically damaged infrastructure would reduce the likelihood of a similar economic recovery. And, the unique culture of this American original that contributed jazz and so much more to the American culture would be lost.

Should this disaster become a reality, it would undoubtedly be one of the greatest disasters, if not the greatest, to hit the United States, with estimated costs exceeding 100 billion dollars. According to the American Red Cross, such an event could be even more devastating than a major earthquake in California. Survivors would have to endure conditions never before experienced in a North American disaster.

Update: that’s not all, the survivors are now “insurgents” too.

Updated on Sunday, 2005-09-04. Posted at 11:05, in the alt » katrina category. Comments [0]
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Rendertime plugin updated

I updated Eric Davis’ rendertime plugin to use the Time::HiRes module instead of Perl’s syscall function. The original version didn’t work on my hosting site.

You can grab the updated plugin here.

Update: Time::HiRes is a standard module in later versions of Perl (from 5.8, I think). If you don’t have it on your system, you can get it from CPAN.

Updated on Saturday, 2005-09-03. Posted at 11:45, in the scrivener category. Comments [0]
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TPN Rock #24

The Rock Show #24 is out!

I had to burn this to a CD to listen at in the car on the way home: a podcast fits into a CD together with a normal music CD, leaving minimal wasted bits on the CD-R.

Also check out this interview with Ewan at Step Out of The Line.

Posted at 00:29, in the alt category. Comments [0]
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Links for 2005-09-02

• E-1 Pro SLR Digital Camera with 14-45 Zuiko Lens and FL20 Flash Kit — price comparison for a dream. Tags: camera comparison prices.

Grabbed from my del.icio.us links.

Posted at 21:47, in the links category. Comments [0]
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Katrina and New Orleans

Charles Stross:

A couple of hundred billion here, a couple of hundred billion there — pretty soon we’re talking real money.

What are the likely consequences (locally and globally) of blowing a 5% of GDP sized hole under the waterline of the US economy?

(Via BoingBoing.)

Update: Before and after pics of New Orleans.

(Via DaveW.)

Updated on Friday, 2005-09-02. Posted at 21:44, in the alt » katrina category. Comments [0]
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Apple and the iPhone

Matt pontificates on the rumoured iPhone, and concludes:

To be honest, an N91-like device with the iTunes store hookup would probably slaughter the music/cellphone crossover market.

It would also slaughter Apple’s margins. They would have to pay licensing to Symbian (also true with UIQ3), and maybe Nokia.

Plus, if they go their own way and make a “pure” apple phone, they would have to deal with carriers and regulators too. Apple is too small for this. Even Microsoft only provides software for phones, and lets the companies that actually manufacture the phones take care of the hassle of certifying the devices.

The Microsoft way means lots of confusing brand names for the same phones, and a trickle of licensing to Redmond. But MS is the richest company on the face of the planet. They won’t crush Nokia and Motorola now, rightly seeing that the digital living room is more important at the moment. Those pesky phone companies can be bought or out-competed later.

But Apple doesn’t have those kinds of resources.

Also, consider a key use of an “iPhone” — using the stored music files as ringtones. Do you think any carrier would offer this phone on contract, if it’d mean that everyone that bought it wouldn’t buy expensive ringtones over the air?

(Update: found this piece by Ewan that explains the carrier’s position in better detail than I’ve laid out.)

For this and other reasons, I’m betting we won’t see an iPhone (or a phone with viable iTunes support) any time soon.

Updated on Saturday, 2005-09-03. Posted at 09:02, in the comm » mobile category. Comments [0]
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“Proprietary”

For me, and many others, the word “proprietary” is pejorative. Proprietary tech is closed, not open; hidden, not shared; expensive, not free.

But I’ve noticed that in certain contexts, “proprietary” is loaded with positive context: it denotes quality and smartness that you only get when you pay clever people lots of money to develop great technology.

This is jarring.

Posted at 21:21, in the comp category. Comments [0]
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Atom feed in place

I’ve installed the Atom feed plugin for Blosxom and it should be working OK. I’m having some issues reading the feed in Bloglines (links get squished in the text) but that may be due to my choice of plugins.

When faced with a choice, I usually pick Atom feeds over RSS, if only to annoy DaveW.

Posted at 00:06, in the scrivener category. Comments [0]
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