You have no choice - not work safe!

Watch this.

FLASH: Frank Wins British Bird

...flim at 11...

PDA-less-ness

My experiment with being PDAless didn't last beyond the first hour of work today Monday, 11/05/07. Can anyone guess why? Of course, DST trumps PDAless every time. The first time I had to log into an obscure video switching system to set its display clock to/from DST... required my PDA and its encrypted list of obscure passwords. Sheeeeeesh.

Although DST is common in Europe and North America, most of the world's people do not use it.
DST used
DST no longer used
DST never used

Open Kitchen

Restaurant Spending

According to the National Restaurant Association's report Restaurant Spending -- 2004:

• The typical American household spent an average of $2,434 on food away from home in 2004. Per-capita expenditures on food away from home averaged $974 that year.
• Households with incomes of $70,000 and over spent an average of $4,308 ($1,390 per capita) on food away from home in 2004. Close to half (47.6 percent) of the total food dollar in these households was spent on food away from home.

Citing speed, convenience and variety Americans are spending "Close to half (47.6 percent) of the total food dollar in these households was spent on food away from home." To me this means two very important things: first, Americans, particularly young people, are not practicing their cooking. Second, the American family is spending even less time in what should be the most revered and honored room in the house, The Kitchen.

When we stop upholding the value of food in our daily lives. When we relinquish the skills of preparation and presentation. When we give up the communion of family meals then we throw ourselves at the feet of the Food Processors.

My children were both fascinated with and horrified by Soylent Green. They it saw it through new eyes. They, who are only interested in microwaving instant meals, couldn't understand the import of a stalk of limp celery. They, who have yet to live for weeks on end eating rama noodles, didn't recognize the succulent, evocative implications of eating strawberry preserves one salacious spoon- licking bite at a time.

It is time to get back to the Sacristy of the Kitchen before it is too late.

Online Etymology Dictionary - Cite This Source - Share This
sacristy

"repository of sacred things," 1601, from Anglo-Fr. sacrestie, from M.L. sacrista, from L. sacer "sacred" (see sacred).

BONUS LINK: Soylent Green T-shirts (not for the faint of heart).

Homemade chocolate chip cookies

...need I say more?

Open BTUs

19_Tobacco_barn
Originally uploaded by william_meloney

I have had the luxury and the privilege of traveling outside the US. I have been allowed to visit remote villages both in Mexico and in China. I was very surprised by the similarity of the two.

A rice paddy is drained and allowed to dry to just the right consistency. It is then scored into brick shapes, roughly 8"x 14" x 4". The bricks are removed from the paddy and allowed to dry further. I am not sure if they are "fired" but judging by the deterioration of old structures I do not believe they are. Then the next home is built. But "home" is to restrictive a label - home/barn/stall/pen/silo/hay loft/warehouse/et al.

Only subtle architectural detail differentiates the mud homes in China from the mud homes in Mexico.

Pictured here is the People's Home of rural China. This is a standard 5 room house. The central room fronted by the porch in the middle and is flanked by two rooms on either side. Above is a open loft.

In one of these homes that I visited the cooking area was inside. I did not find any inside plumbing. More often than not one of the five rooms contained livestock.

The Tobacco barn, picture at the top, is of particular note. Applied to the walls surrounding the hearth are "fuel" patties. A mixture of coal dust and organic material, primarily cattle dung is formed into patties and then slapped against the wall to dry. Later they will be peeled off and use in the hearth to cure the tobacco hung in the tobacco barn.

Below is an excerpt from the EIA's statistics of World Energy Consumption. What is of significance is the disparity of energy use verses population. China with an estimated population of 1.3 Billion people use 20% less energy than the United States with an estimated population of approximately 301 Million people.

Word up

Open Table

Average Meal in London now the Most Expensive in the World

by Neil Woodburn Sep 16th 2007 @ 12:10PM

Well, this is hardly a surprise: London has been awarded the honor of being the most expensive city in the world for dining out.

According to a recent article in the Guardian, a typical three-course meal and a glass of wine now costs an average of $79 per person in the British capital. Ouch!

Paris takes second place with $72. Tokyo averages $71 while New York comes in at a comparatively cheap $39.

The data is based upon the ubiquitous Zagat Guide. The most recent London edition has just been published and the 2.9% increase in the average cost of a meal from last year's edition has concerned local foodies. As for myself, London just keeps dropping lower and lower on my list of places to visit. I'd rather just hang out in New York where the food is half the cost. And, of course, much tastier!

World Meal

• The goal of this activity is to experientially heighten awareness about the overabundance of food in Western society, particularly in comparison with how much the majority of the world eats.
• Cook a World Meal and share it with a group of people.
• A World Meal is the average meal for the average person on the planet. It consists of a limited amount of rice and beans.
• Herbs and spices are optional; as is anything you can forage from the local natural environment.
• Encourage the group to, in turn, to cook a World Meal for a different group of people and thereby spread experiential awareness of how much we overconsume in Western society.

• Continue cooking World Meals for groups of people at least until you've activated a critical mass of awareness for a snowball effect.

• 
  

(Source: Clive Offley, Food - The Facts, New Internationalist, Issue 225, November, 1991)

Open Water

Reporting in the

Friday, November 2, 2007

MySpace Joins Google Alliance to Counter Facebook

By MIGUEL HELFT and BRAD STONE
Published: November 2, 2007

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 1 — MySpace and Bebo, two of the world’s largest social networking sites, on Thursday joined a Google-led alliance that is promoting a common set of standards for software developers to write programs for social networks.
...
“OpenSocial is going to be become the de facto standard for developers right out of the gate,” said Chris DeWolfe, chief executive of MySpace, in a press conference at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. “It will have access to 200 million users, making it way bigger than any other platform out there.”

The open standards could create a boom of innovation around social networks as applications reach more users than ever and encourage developers to create more Internet tools.

Clean Water is the Gift of Life!!

Water ... worth more than gold and necessary for survival above all other resources on earth.

And yet, over one billion men, women, and children (more than four times the population of the United States and Canada combined) do not have safe water to drink and therefore cannot live a healthy life.

Who are these people?

They are the innocent children and desperate families living in overcrowded urban ghettos, in refugee encampments, and in towns and villages too numerous to count in rural areas of developing countries.

Here, less than 50% of the population have access to safe drinking water and only 25% have access to sanitary systems.

They are unfortunate victims of drought and ever-changing environmental conditions. When drought occurs, their countryside is transformed into an arid wasteland where every living thing seems to cry out for lack of water.

These precious people do not have enough water to grow and harvest food, enough water to keep their livestock alive, enough clean water to protect themselves and their children from hunger and disease.

They do not have enough water to survive

Microsoft Windows SteadyState shakey at best....

Running a number of common access PCs means having to lock them down tight! When I learned that Microsoft had entered the 'access management' arena I was excited. Alas, my excitement was short lived.

Turns out that in its most "secure" state the SteadyState PC will still let the users shoot themselves and the PC in the foot. My question is why didn't Microsoft go the full mile and lock the system completely? I would have thought that Microsoft would have learned again the lesson of their OSs failures. Start with everything locked and then allow users only what you want them to access.

At what expense?

An NPR segment this morning related concerns about Internet Privacy and the need for a "No-Track" list. Such concern is admirable. Then the question crossed my mind, "At what expense?"

I am not speaking here of the relative cost of personal Internet Privacy.

What 'real world' (my choice of words) ... what 'real world' issues are being pushed aside in favor of concerns about Internet Privacy? What slight percentage of the Family of Man can afford to be concerned about Internet Privacy?

Hungry families also face tough choices
between food and basic necessities:
• 41% of households had to choose between paying
for food and paying for utilities and heating fuel
• 32% had to choose between paying for food and
paying for medicine or medical care
• 18% had to choose between paying for food and
paying for rent or mortgage

This is certainly only one example. It is not "exciting". It doesn't have political "sex" appeal. So this and other issue stand in the shadow of Internet Privacy? At what expense?

Cat Stevens Yusuf Islam Father and Son 2007

Just another FaceBook in the crowd (2)

The Saint, my wife of some twenty-fourish years, is a Scrabble addict. Very early in the morning and very late at night she is found staring bleary eyed at an assortment of consonants and not enough vowels. She plays against the computer because ... well, it is just more convenient. (I am not even sure of the program she plays - I could find out if I took the time.) One thing is clear - the price per game per play has fallen to the point where the author should consider paying her to play the game. My point is that she has gotten much more than her initial capital outlay for the game AND she doesn't have to pay for it again and again and again.

Out of curiosity I am now going to open another Firefox tab, enter some cryptic Google criteria and see if... Aha! Just as I thought... Internet Scrabble Club ... I registered my user name, password and my e-mail address. Downloaded the java interface and BINGO! Er, uh, I mean... SCRABBLE!

Now wait just a tile-sorting minute... I am not advocating the ISC. Not even if I were to get a triple word score for "apostate" or some such... My point is that we don't need contrived SocialSewingCircles or Walled-Gardens when the Internet is the greater "social network". Marshall McLuhan and Pogo were/are right: "We have met the message and it is us."

It is only when self-serving bottom-line profit-margin hyphenated-a$$holes attempt to extract their pound of flesh that we end up "needing" social communities. In part it is our own failings. We want to belong. We want to belong to something other than the greater population. So Monied interests pander to our desires, our wants and our fears. All the while putting advertisements in front of our eye-balls.

And while I am on a rant&roll ... how about those purveyors of "Love"? Purveying and preying on the most vulnerable, those "lookin' fer love [in all the wrong places]." Preying on the most basic, deep seated, human need/desire... to be loved. Offering the man or woman of your dreams... s/he is just a click away. Just enter all your vital statistics, all your private information, all your deepest secrets...and Oh yeah, your credit card number and we will fix you right up. "Step right up, ...

Step right up
step right up
step right up
Everyone's a winner, bargains galore
That's right, you too can be the proud owner
Of the quality goes in before the name goes on
One-tenth of a dollar

It is as if the world was too big, the universe too vast, the Internet too ... too something-or-other... we need to be members of some smaller order, some familiar covenant, some little comfort zone. We want to belong and the only way we can make that distinction for ourselves is with a small lapel pin label: FaceBookMySpaceEtAl. When in fact we are all engaged in the greatest social network known to mankind: The Internet.

Class Action Lawsuit: Microsoft steals CPU cycles, slows users PC without permission

A desktop search engine that I didn't ask for and don't want!!!!

More to follow when I can get my anger under control.

Having Seth both Godin ways

Seth Godin: I know you are enamored with those little contradictions in life and advertising... but I really think you missed the "ice-cream-for-the-freezer" on this one... give it another look.

Ubuntu and the Wall Street Journal

Ubuntu is still a little "rough"... according to the WSJ.

PERSONAL TECHNOLOGY

By WALTER S. MOSSBERG

This column is written for mainstream, nontechie users of digital technology. These folks aren't necessarily novices, and they aren't afraid of computers. They also aren't stupid. They simply want their digital products to operate as promised, with as little maintenance and hassle as possible.

So, I have steered away from recommending Linux, the free computer operating system that is the darling of many techies and IT managers, and a challenger to Microsoft's dominant Windows and Apple's resurgent Macintosh operating system, OS X. Linux, which runs on the same hardware as Windows, has always required much more technical expertise and a yen for tinkering than average users possess.
...

I've been testing one of those Dell Ubuntu computers, a laptop called the Inspiron 1420N. I evaluated it strictly from the point of view of an average user, someone who wouldn't want to enter text commands, hunt the Web for drivers and enabling software, or learn a whole new user interface. I focused on Ubuntu and the software programs that come bundled with it, not on the hardware, which is a pretty typical Dell laptop.

My verdict: Even in the relatively slick Ubuntu variation, Linux is still too rough around the edges for the vast majority of computer users.
...

Emphasis mine...

If an individual had grown up with something other than Windows would they still be able to consider themselves "average"? I suggest that if an individual had made an equivalent investment in Linux their expectations would be considerably different than if he/she started with Windows today. (If a person grew up speaking English all of their life how would the feel about being thrust into Chinese?)

We have all 'grown up' dealing with the vagaries of Windows. We survived the years and years of BSODs. We still have to accept 'crashes' as a fact of life. AND we still have to accept BigBrother Bill&Steve telling us what is right/good for us. Excuse me but exactly what is the Windows promise? To me this smacks of 'better the devil you know'. I have news: The Devil is still the Devil.

I am an "average" Linux user. I started with Linux in 1997-98. My work with Ubuntu, though it is not my favorite distro, clearly indicates that it is very smooth. So a much superior Operating System (OS) coupled with an excellent Graphical User Interface (GUI) makes Linux the hands-down winner in my book.

The AWM paradigm

I have previously posted about AWM (which is not to be confused with Ardent Window Manager). Alpt-wm is the ultra simple, ultra small and BLAZINGLY FAST window manager...

http://freaknet.org/alpt/src/alpt-wm
svn co http://dev.hinezumi.org/svnroot/alpt-wm


alpt-wm - dynamic window manager
================================
This is my custom, window manager. It's small, functional and fast.
It is based on dwm ( http://www.suckless.org/wiki/dwm ) and it is just ~1800 lines of code.

...with absolutely NO bells and whistles. So what could be so good about something sooooo small?

Anyone remember screen ? It is the gift to console multitaskers ,particularly when ssh-ed into another system. AWM is to xwindows as screen is to the console. I am tempted to show a couple of screen captures but they would just take up bandwidth.

The Matrix revisited...

AWM allows the user to create a matrix of virtual desktops. X1, Y1 is the first. X1, Y2 is to the right of X1, Y1. X2, Y1 is above X1, Y1 and so on. Ctrl-Alt-RightArrow moves from 1,1 to 1,2 or Alt-Shift-UpArrow moves from 1,1 to 2,1. Each virtual desktop is created as you move to it. I just tried and I made 1,20. Certainly there are memory limitations but the point is that you can make the number of virtual desktops that you need at any given time.

So, I generally start out with two. The first runs a full screen xterm console. No frames, no menu bar, no clashing keymapping. Just a plain and simple CLI. Just like the good old days. But then comes the really great part. On my "second" virtual desktop I start an instance of FireFox, FULL SCREEN (yeah, yeah, I am yelling...'cause I am excited. Whatyawant?)

This is important, why? Why, because running on a IBM R51 laptop means that I only have 1024x768 to begin with. I am excited because I can run my X apps without taking the automatic GUI real estate hit.

So let me recap. I get a nearly unlimited number of virtual desktops. I get full screen console CLI and I get X apps all at the same time. All in about 19 megabytes of memory! (Emphasis mine! :) )

Those are the PROS...
...here are some CONS:

1. AWM doesn't do anything for you. It is all up to you.
2. You must start programs from the command line (if you didn't "hard" code them into config.h before you recompiled.)
3. You have to "remember" what program is running on which virtual desktop.
4. It has no sex appeal
5. It has not eye candy

Changing perspectives

As any parent can tell you there is little difference between a child's perception of want and need. In the field of IT I have observed that customers as well distinguish only slightly between their wants and needs. Clearly I remember the users at one customer's site insisting that they needed sound cards for each of their PCs. Unlike today, PCs were both very costly and poorly appointed when they arrived from the manufacturer. Adding a sound card to each PC was both economically costly as well as person-power intensive. All for what? So that the users could hear "You've got mail!" Beyond that "need" there was no other business line objective being met by the expenditure of time and money on sound cards.

[Digression: (Sound Card = $65.00 + Person-hours (2 per PC @ $35.00/Hr) = $70.00) x 35 PCs = $4,725.00 = "Oh yeah! You got mail, baby. And the company got pwned!" ...but I digress.]

...changing perspectives...

My interest was piqued by an entry in the Freshmeat.net listing this morning. AWM is listed as a minimal windowing environment.

It's small, functional, and fast. It is based on dwm and is just ~1800 lines of code.

I am a Linux gadget geek and so the prospect of a minimal window manager just begged to be explored. The entire tarball for awm-0.0.7.tar.bz2 lists ( ls -alth ) at just 20K. A window manager in less than 20K (~1800 lines of code). Unbelievable!

AWM is such a small program that configuring it is a matter of editing a config.h file before compiling. When I compiled it and it didn't offer the expected console window I checked config.h and it wanted rxterm. Slackware 12 doesn't have an rxterm. So I just deleted the "r" and recompiled.

BINGO!

I have a really simple and FAST window manager. Very cool... but that is not really the changing perspective I wanted to talk about here.

AWM does not do anything beyond display the window(s) and allow the user to move among virtual "desktops". There are no short-cuts, no icons, no menus, no nothing! AWM does almost* nothing for the user. As such the user gets to make all the decisions about what programs get run. Once the decision(s) are made then it is up the the user to manually start the program(s). It is at this point that my perspective is beginning to change...radically.

In this minimalist environment I am prompted to evaluate exactly what my needs are compared to what my wants might be. Do I "need" all the bells and eye-candy whistles in order to have a fulfilling computer experience. What to I really want? And more importantly, what do I really need?

My conclusions are as minimal as AWM.

1. I need a command prompt (xterm) so that I can run the script that connects my PCMCIA wireless network card to my home network. (Ctrl-Alt-x)*
   
2. I need to start my browser, Firefox, to access all of my Web 2.0 base applications. (Ctrl-Alt-f)*
   
3. I want to run Pidgin (my IM client) on a different virtual "desktop" so I change to it (Ctrl-Alt-RightArrow)
   
4. I then need to start anther console (xterm) so that I can start Pidgin. (Ctrl-Alt-x)*
   
5. I want to move the Pidgin window to the upper right corner of the desktop. (Ctrl-LeftButton-Drag)

Earlier I said AWM does almost* nothing for the user. The "*" alludes to the reconfigurability of AWM. In the case of FireFox the author, Alpt, graciously gave a working example in the config.h file for GeekHacks like me to get up and running. Simple additions to the config.h file (and then recompile) allows the user to "configure" AWM's keybindings any way they may choose.

Note: After I figured out the Slackware vs. rxterm issue I purposely went back and put the "r" back into the config.h file. This effectively prevents AWM from starting a command console window on every virtual desktop. Instead I bound xterm to the Ctrl-Alt-x keystrok combination. That allows me to start a command console window only when I want to. AWM ROCKZ!!!

So here is the ...changing perspectives... bottom line: I rely on FireFox and Pidgin for the majority of my computing wants. I need a simple window manager so that I can run these two programs. I do not need all the rest of the stuff that comes with my Slackware 12 distribution.

It is this perspective that makes me mumble and grumble when customers call up and tell me that they have to have the latest and greatest soft/hardware. "I need it. I just can't get along without it."

...Git along little doggies, git along...

Bonus Video (Longish, you don't need to watch the entire full length feature.)

"Tell me what you want, what you really really want..."

Something borrowed, something blue...

Something Amazing - video powered by Metacafe

Borrowed from maZm

Neo, meet Mister Anderson...

Brain-computer interface for Second Life

From the safety and security of my life-pod I can now virtually venture forth and...

...wait, can anyone else smell the Matrix...or was that cookies?

(Thanks Jeremy)