Blowing off some steam

From the “I just don’t understand my Father” Dept.

Hi all,

Just want to remark about an incident that happened today, but in order for you to best understand what I’m going through, you’ll need some background about my family.

My Parents moved here in 1973, they’ve worked hard to ensure a reasonably high quality of life for my brothers and I (which I am ever so thankful, of course). For those who don’t know, my Dad is a 3rd generation Watchmaker, and my Mom works at a linens’ factory. We’ve never been rich…never really wanted to be rich.

However, I think some of the hardships, financially speaking, have warped my Dad somewhat.

Case in point (and the reason that I’m writing this):

Last week, I received a call from the local branch of Cerebral Palsy Canada. They were doing their bi-annual clothing drive, and were asking for my support. “No problem,” I said, “I’ve put out clothing for the last 4 years.”

After several reminders to my family, I bagged up a rather large and dense bag of clothing and left it outside my house for pickup.

My mom is has been on vacation this week, so I’ve been helping her clean the house, do some home repair work, etc. Guess what I find while cleaning the house?

Four bags of clothes that was suppose to have gone to CPC.

So I guess this is what transpired: For the past five years, my Dad has been surreptitiously taking the clothing (that had been meant for Cerebral Palsy Canada) and hiding them back inside the house. Very sneaky.

I’m not exactly sure why he’s been doing this for the past 4 years, but I’m positive, that in order to do it this year, he had to drive back during his lunch hour to pick up the clothes; I was home all day.

The clothes are out of date, and there is no possible way that he could fit in them….

So my Dad is a pack rat. I admit it.

Hell, he even keeps expired calendars, because you never know, when you’ll need that Farside/Dilbert calendar from 1999 again.

Tai

Some interesting links on Design

From the “Design and ERGOnomical” Dept.

Just wanted to spread the word about a few things that I have been reading of late. The first is a good article in Business 2.0 by Robert Partks entitled ““Great-Looking Product (Too Bad Nobody Wants It)—Why good design is not always good business”. Interesting read whereby he lists three rules (citing real-world examples) that companies often make when designing and bringing a product to market.

They are as follows:

• Design is often put on a product as an afterthought
• Design does not fit the brand
• The company does not back the design with a strong marketing push.

While the article has some valid points, it is rather limited in scope. I think it neglects to mention some obvious tenets of design: “Does the product work? Does it work well? Does it enrich the user experience?” If there isn’t a need in the market, why bring a complicated, unusable product to market?

Example: The CueCat

In this interesting piece of hardware, a company known as DigitalConvergence, mailed out thousands of these small, cat-shaped barcode readers to a random sample of magazine subscribers. The company expected users to plug in the scanner and aimlessly scan barcodes while sitting at the computer. Internal software would read the barcode and send the user to the product’s website or a special website whereby users could compete for prizes. Not much of a business plan, but the company would also keep track of what users scanned, creating an index of products for marketing research. Needless to say, the company no longer exists and it is currently in receivership. Ironically, you can still find articles proclaiming the sheer brilliance of this product on the Internet.

The second article is about the passing of the encryption program PrettyGoodPrivacy (PGP). In a telling analysis of the demise of the PGP encryption unit, Gartner analysts Vic Wheatman, John Pescatore and Joyce Graff hit the bullseye on why PGP failed:

Gartner believes the failure of commercial PGP likely resulted from Network Associates’ [the parent company of PGP] past organizational problems…..most importantly, Network Associates’ failure to make PGP easier for enterprises to use and manage.

Ideally, all Internet messages, be it email, VoiceIP, or instant Messaging, should be encrypted—especially in the workplace. However, in most cases, email encryption is often too cumbersome (via the use of Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) solutions offered by such companies as PGP, Verisign, or Thawte) for most people to user efficiently. By that, I mean Easy to use, fast, and hard to screw up. There is also the risk that the receiving party may not be able to decode the message—but that’s another story that I’m not too clear about. Here’s a telling quote, “The entire process—assigning, distributing and managing keys and finding compatible software for both ends of the exchange.“

Finally the last article I read is on a really cool technology that aims to make reality more palatable. It’s called Augmented Reality, and the best way that I can describe it is to imagine a contextual overlay ontop of everything we see, hear, taste, touch, and smell.

The article can be found at the Popular Science Site.

I would love for this kind of stuff to be available, but it’s obvious that careful design is needed for this to work. Not only is there a huge Information Overload threat, but the computer would have to be context sensitve. Whether a computer can successfully determine the type of information that I want to see, and whether or not it knows when I want to see extra information….wow.

Cheers,

Tai

Whatchya gonna do…?

From the “Wrestlemania” Dept.

It’s 4:20 am in the morning, and I needed to write down my experience at this year’s Wrestlemania (my first major wrestling event) at Toronto’s Skydome.

The match of the day was the Rock againstHollywood Hulk Hogan. I wasn’t expecting much to be honest. The Rock is, and I quote, “The most electrifying athlete in sports entertainment,” and Hollywood Hulk Hogan is a 48-year old former superstar; a man well passed his prime.

In fact, the match was billed as The Battle of the Icons.

Two men. One of them a hero of the 1980s, the other known to us as the “Bhrama Bull”. The last time Hulk Hogan wrestled in TO was when he lost his WWF Championship Belt in 1990 against the Ultimate Warrior. It was a time when a body slam, a rake-to-the-back, a boot-to-the-head, and a Leg-Drop could take down the toughest of opponents.

FACT: The 1990 Wrestlemania at the Skydome was also the first time the “double clothesline” was debuted.

Times have changed in the WWF. Hogan was old. The Rock was young.

When Hogan walked down the ramp, we booed. Everyone knew he was going to lose to the Rock. How could 1980s wrestling possibly beat the “RockBottom” and the “People’s Elbow”?

The Rock’s music played. We stood up. Finally, the Rock HAD COME BACK TO TORONTO! It was glorious. The MILLIONS and MILLIONS of fans cheered world-wide.

The two gladiators looked at each other and girded themselves for battle.

The locked arms and the bell rang.

Something changed in the crowd at that moment. It was as if we remembered and tasted some of the greatness that was once Hulkamania. We remembered that he would come down in red and yellow to Survivor’s “I am a Real American”—could we ever really forget? All the prayer, all the vitamins—then it happened:

With one push, Hulk Hogan launched the Rock to the ground.

Then he “hulked up” [flexed].

We erupted to shouts of “Hogan, Hogan, Hogan…” We booed this man called the Rock, an imposter trying to touch the greatness that IS Hulkamania. Who was this pretender?

If I could only articulate the energy in the stadium during that match….

Oh, how we cheered when Hulk Hogan raked the back of the Rock! Or how we stood up and shook the rafters when we saw the boot-to-the-head! How we knew that victory was within reach when the Mighty Hulk Hogan laid the Leg-Drop across the Rock’s chest.

“1!” we yelled across the arena.

“2!” we screamed as the referee’s hand went down against the mat again.

And then the rocked snapped up after the 2 count.

Hogan picked him up, threw the Rock against the ropes. Then he “Rock Bottom’d” the Rock. Another Leg Drop!

Yet the Rock would not go down.

He never did.

Needless to say, the Rock eventually pinned Hogan with the “People’s Elbow”.

But if you all could have been there. Let’s just say that if I could have bottled up some of the stuff floating in the air during that match—WOW. Talk about a can of liquid energy.

It was a great vibe. Everything that Wrestlemania was suppose to be.

The last two matches (the women’s bout, and the Jericho and Triple-H match) were a yawn. A fifth of the audience had left after the Hogan vs. Rock match.

I’ll stop ruminating now, and leave you with this question:

Whatchya gonna do, when Hulkamania runs wild on you?

Tai

Slight Technical Difficulties

From the “I am so Dumb” Dept.

Warning: The contents of this blog are highly technical

My weblog was down for about 12 hours lastnight and today. This morning I went into my webjournal admin page to edit only to find this:

CGIWrap Error: Execution of this script not permitted

Execution of (investig8) is not permitted for the following reason:

User not Privileged.

---

Local Information and Documentation:

 

Contact Name: AdministratorContact EMail: admin

 

Server Data:

Server Administrator/Contact: admin

Server Name: www.pixelsandwidgets.com

Server Port: 80

Server Protocol: HTTP/1.1

 

Request Data:

User Agent/Browser: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows NT 5.0; T312461)

Request Method: GET

Remote Address: xx.xxx.xxx.xxx

Remote Port: xxxx

Extra Path Info: /xxxxxx/xx.cgi

 

WTF?

So out comes some command line goodness via terminal to check the user permisions. I was looking at the CHMOD (CHange file MODe) values and they all seemed correct (Column 1). Lo and behold, all my files have the same properties, or do they?

However, what I failed to notice, was the “Investig8” moniker in Column 3. I apparently had lost ownership.

Dumb, Dumb, Dumb!

Yesterday I deleted an old user account that I didn’t use. Since the files no longer had an owner, they had no reference as to who could use it. If you know unix, you know what I mean, but if you don’t, I’ll try to explain.

Every file in a unix file system requires a specific set of permissions: Read, Write and Execute. These permisions are repeated 3 times in hiearchical fashion, beginning with the OWNER, then the GROUP that the file belongs to, and then Other people. When you upload a file, the FTP user account that you use becomes the owner. When I had deleted the old account (pixelswidget), I deleted the owner of those files (all my cgi-scripts). The result was that the files, having no owner, could not determine which group it was associated with (hence the site410 in column 4), and hence had no bearing as to how to execute when a user outside of the owner and group tried to execute the file.

It’s interesting. It was so basic of a mistake, I didn’t realise it.

Tai

Skeletons in the Closet

From the “Cleaning my Closet” Dept.

Started cleaning out my closet just after lunch.

Some of the things that I found:

• A bag full of Plastic Bags
• An old RC control Car from Radio Shack
• A mint condition G.I. Joe, Cobra B.A.T.
• Old assignments from Kindergarten to about Grade 1
• Book 3 – Boats to Cereals, of the Golden Book Encyclopedia, published in 1959 —a gift from my grade 1 teacher, Ms. J. Roberrtson, to my mother
• A box full of Archie, Garfield and Calvvin and Hobbes comics
• A box of learn Chinese and English Flash cards — these obviously went unused

Some Diamonds in the Rough:

• A full deck of RISK cards
• An old Olympus TRIP 35 circa 1976
• My copy of Reinventing Comics

There’s still a lot of stuff in the closet….DAMN!

Tai

The Brotherhood of the Stag

From the “Who will get married first” Dept.

This particular log is meant to immortalize a pact between three friends — Three Men. Oh, and Dave was thrown in too. So that’s FOUR men. Count ‘em, four men.

The following are excerpts from an MSN chat I had with Byron and Kevin:

It started with an innocent question:

Which started the ball rolling:

Then chips began to fall into place:

The rules were laid out. Dave was voted in by Proxy.

Then the oath was signed.

The final touch:

Artificial Intelligence

Jen and I watched A.I. yesterday—Stanley Kubrick, as realised by Steven Spielberg. It was a wholly forgetable movie.

Except for Teddy.

Jen liked Teddy.

But I think most women are prone to like fuzzy, cute things.

Anyways, as I was telling Kevin—better yet, I’ll just show you the MSN Log:

Cheers,

Tai

Remembering the past few days; a retrospect

Seems I’ve been too lax on the update of my weblog.

From the “When Information Dies” Dept.

I’ve always sucked at keeping a journal. Unknownst to most, I actually kept a journal for my last year of High School and the first year of University. It’s a long text file that resides on the old 486 that my brother, Kai, now uses. Of course, it’s encrypted…and I’ve probably forgotten the password. It’s also a MS Word 2.0 document, so it’s probably suffered the same fate as the Domesday Book—an inventory of eleventh-century England compiled in 1086 by Norman monks that was transcribed digitally in 1986 by the BBC to showoff the latest and greatest in digital Archiving. The format used by the BBC? The Laser disc.

Fast forward to today, 16 years later: Nothing can read the data on the those discs.

Much like my journal, the information is “dead“. I don’t think that MS Office XP or MS Office v.X (mac) can read the MS Word 2.0 doc.

BTW, the original book, written in 1086, is alive and doing well thank you very much.

At the bitter end of the journal project v1, I was updating it on a year to year basis. Since I kept the journal on my computer for about 2 1/2 years, well, when you do the math, carrying over the 1 and such—you get the picture.

I guess we’re lucky that Shakespeare didn’t write on an old PC.

From the “ERGOnomical” Dept.

Another thing that I wanted to talk about, but slipped my mind. About two weeks ago Microsoft released the X-Box in Japan with much fanfare. Now I know it sounds geeky, but looks the MS finally listened to their customers and redesigned the controllers on the Xbox; they’ve been localised for the smaller hands of the Japanese and asian markets. Sounds stupid, but I could never figure out why MS designed a controller as large as the one in the North American Xbox. Especially since children are one of the major pushes for selling the damn thing. Perhaps they expect them to “grow into them”.

From the “What I Did Last Week” Dept.

Had a good time during Jen’s birthday celebration. Us and 16 others went to an Italian restaurant in Little Italy called “Giovanas”. Had to spend an extra $55 to cover some “social loafers” — it OKAY, social loafing naturally occurs, I do it myself all the time — which left me with $10 in my wallet and a $12 cover charge that still had to be paid.

Thanks Eric. Thanks for spotting me the 2 bucks.

Had an absolutely wicked time at the Revival. We saw a funk/melange band from Winnipeg (Jen’s old hometown) called Moses Mayes who opened for an absolutely amazing band from TO called the Pocket Dwellers.

Very cool. Great Vibe.

Eric has a much more detailed review of the performance with some pictures to boot too.

Cris and Dave also came out all the way from Milwalkee. Sorry for ruining the surprise, Cris.

I got Jen tickets to the Garth Fagan Dance Troupe on March 23rd. Hopefully, it’s as interesting as Les Ballets Jazz de Montreal.

Cheers,

Tai

First Page Up.

Hey all, you can see the first page of pixels and widgets.

I tried to keep simple and elegant. None of the other pages are up, but they will look rather similar I think.

Now If I can only get the damn weblog to appear properly.

Cheers,

Tai.