Freedom’s author is none other than Fred Stutzman, co-founder of claimid and local ibiblio dude. Now, can I get a weekend version to lock the keyboard…
Freedom is an application that disables wireless and ethernet networking on an Apple computer for up to three hours at a time. Freedom will free you from the distractions of the internet, allowing you time to code, write, or create. At the end of your selected offline period, Freedom re-enables your network, restoring everything as normal.
[From Freedom, OS X Networking Freedom Software]
Enough with the generic presidential debates already. Haven’t we learned about everything we can from gotcha debates? Let’s debate science policy; environment, health and medicine, and technology. This is real substance, real interesting and real important.
For the past few months, I have not been feeling eMusic. If you’ve only dealt with iTunes, then eMusic seems like a breath of fresh air. The pay-per-tune model is replaced with a monthly subscription that includes a fixed number of downloads. Once you reach the plan limit, you’re cut off and have to wait for next month. I had a 90 track per month plan for $15, so that’s a lot cheaper than iTunes at 99 cents.
Unfortunately, wading through junk recordings to find something fresh gets harder every month of the plan. I was in for the jazz and classical recordings primarily, but the eMusic offerings just don’t include the small labels who are publishing really good, modern stuff.
Lots of good jazz is archive and if you’re interested in early, classic recordings then eMusic can help fill the holes in your collection. Outside of that, eMusic won’t help you much.
So, goodbye eMusic. It was a great start, but you’re history; just like most of the jazz recordings in your library.
Update (1/30/2009): I’m back and so far have been finding some really great stuff. Thanks eMusic, for not reading this post and punishing me for it!
About the same time I described a local company’s IT abomination as “antiquated”, I came across loosewireblog’s post about user determined computing. An apt description of a blossoming concept.
Why do companies inflict IT systems on their employees that they wouldn’t dare ship to their own customers? Sadly, use of the word enterprise in the name or description is an early warning that it is going to suck. Here are a few examples of internal enterprise solutions I’ve encountered recently:
- Restricted email clients. If you don’t use the corporate approved client, you can’t get support.
- Internal mail lists that don’t archive messages. What’s the point?
- Time accounting systems that suck.
- Gold plated, IEEE compliant project management tools that make your eyes glaze over with features, links, colors, formatting, buttons… Please make it stop.
- Wikis (nice try, though) that have no RSS feeds or change notification.
- Byzantine process for scheduling conference calls on an internal bridge.
- Serialized document collaboration based on email workflow.
- Over engineered bug tracking and case management tools.
Some companies see their IT services as cost centers rather than strategic. When that’s the case, employees suffer the consequences and ignore the tools. Everyone loses.
First jazz gem discovery of 2008. This album from Alan Pasqua has throwback fusion undercurrents spiced with enough modern freshness to make it extremely interesting.
The album opens with a slightly restrained title track, but quickly gets edgy on “George Russell”.
“Prayer” begins as a quiet rhapsody for piano and morphs into a meaty set of funky tunes.
Pasqua likes a growling, electric Fender Rhodes sound over lots of laid back grooving.
Much of The Antisocial Club has a hard, driving ensemble feel that you’ll love if you’re into modern quintets. Trumpet and sax are out front, frequently doubled, with twisty, harmonic melodies. Tasteful use of electronica in solos and breaks is a really nice contrast to the rhythmic beats.
The album closes with “Message to Beloved Souls Departed”, a reflective, muted ostinato with simple, rich harmonies; possibly for Michael Brecker who passed away last year.
For its part, while acknowledging that one of its phones was indeed the culprit, LG reportedly claimed that dying due to such an accident was “virtually impossible.” [From Korean man killed by exploding cellphone - Engadget]
For what it is worth, I did some freelance work a few years ago for WebView. One of their clients was inspecting polymer materials used in battery construction. They were very aware of the consequences of shipping pinholed product.
Here’s a weird thing that happened while working with VMWare Server. While trying to get one of my virtual machines bridged to our corporate LAN, I kept getting an error that no dns servers were configured.
The fix was to force the VMnet0 controller choice rather than allow it to bridge to an automatically chosen adapter. By doing that, the virtual machine was able to get an IP on the LAN.
This was for a Windows XP host machine and the configuration is performed by the Virtual Network Editor located on the host at VMWare Server > Manage Virtual Networks.
A new site, walkscore.com, helps calculate how walkable an address is.
The site generates a WalkScore(tm) by measuring distances to walkable locations near the address and presents the results as a google map mashup. Of course, there are limitations such as safety, pedestrian friendly design, freeway intersections, weather, etc.
The site is focused on helping real estate brokers and buyers evaluate the walkability of their property. Real estate websites can generate a widget to embed on their pages.
However, this service combined with satellite imagery is bound to give walk-minded travelers a good idea of what ground transportation they may need (or not) at a destination.
The WalkScore may also have some usefulness as an inverse suburban sprawl score. Low scores are probably not desirable for people who want to walk for exercise or community services.
Here are scores from local downtown areas:
Carrboro – 89
Raleigh Moore Square – 89
Cary Downtown – 82
Apex Downtown – 65
Holly Springs – 38
40. (with egg) Visual Studio, Ruby on Rails, and Old Dudes Who Know Smalltalk
I really love Old Dudes Who Know Smalltalk! I was nurtured, sculpted, and brainwashed by Old Dudes Who Know Smalltalk from my very first day as a professional programmer, and they universally “get it”. Young whipper-snappers out there, take note: if you ever here (sic) some Old Dude say the words “in Smalltalk you could blah blah blah” or “In VisualWorks you could yada yada”, spend as much time with this person as possible. You will learn more from them about software development than the Young Dude who only wears black and thinks that the bash shell is “too bloated”.
Oh… I am so feeling the love. One old dude benefit is in recognizing useful language features. I immediately fell in love with Groovy after seeing it’s Closures implementation. (By coincidence, I’m listening to Jason explain Closures on a WebDevRadio interview. He wants to whip out his Mac and show you, but… it’s radio). Likewise, being interested in tools to better exploit processor concurrency, I’ve been studying Erlang and have to say that I’m really disappointed with the bulky syntax. It just isn’t very readable, IMO. I much prefer the clean syntax of Scala.
Update: Merlyn has similar issues with Erlang readability, though attributes it to style rather than language syntax. I have to admit, the solution gives me hope.
One day there will be statements about the Old Dudes Who Know Ruby. I don’t really expect to be around for that one, but trust me; it will happen.
Henry Butler played last night in the Nelson Music room at Duke University. The solo Jazz piano concert was part of the Following Monk series, celebrating Thelonious Monk’s 90th birthday on October 10th. Monk was born in Rocky Mount, though didn’t stay long. He was known for the sparse voicings in his left hand.
Mr. Butler started the show with a couple of Monk evoking tunes, but in homage to Monk’s short stay in Rocky Mount, Butler soon left Tribute Town and began a heavy handed program more in the villages of McCoy Tyner and Oscar Peterson. In honor of the style, I’ve created a Big Handed, Old School, Jazz Pianists Who Stomp Their Left Feets station on Pandora.
The show was great and warmly received, but 90 minutes was enough for me. Great Jazz doesn’t always require foot tapping to 4/4 time.
