Nick Spencer is Hydra and why you should care

#NickSpencerIsHydra

Plenty of Spoilers. If you are interested in reading Marvel's Captain America, Steve Rogers issues 1 and 2, I would urge you to not bother. But if you do want to, and wish to do so spoiler free, stop reading this and come back later.  For full disclosure, I have not read this series, and will not for reasons outlined here.  My knowledge of this story comes from online posts that either support or deride the story.  However, I have been a Marvel fan and have read comics passionately since the early 70's.

In the newest story line about Captain America, Steve Rogers has been revealed as a long time sleeper agent for Hydra. In issue 2, we find that the Cosmic Cube, a reality warping device, has change reality so that Steve was recruited into Hydra as a young child.  If you are having problems with the reality changing concept, think about it as someone went back in time and changed young Steve's life so he became a Hydra agent.  That's happens all the time in Star Trek.  As an aside, we always hated it when our Game Master used the reality changing plot device when we played Space Opera.

For those that fear this is a permanent change, fear not. When the storyline is done, and some time has passed to prove they are not just caving, reality will be changed again. Or it will be ignored and treated as if it never happened.

This does not excuse the betrayal of the writer and editor. I dislike betrayal more than any other plot device.  I dislike it even more in real life.  I believe this is wrong on many levels, more than I'm going to cover, but I'll break it down into the levels that are important to me right now.

It's a bad comic book story. #DontReadBadComics

I see an abundance of defenders of this story saying that, it's probably not people who go buy the comics that are complaining about this. They say that true readers of this comic know that this is a temporary change.

Ok, let's take a look at that. Are they saying that they are writing off anyone that does not read the story right now?  Obviously these fans are interested in the character, or they wouldn't be so angry.  So would it not be a better idea to write stories that will draw them in, instead of insulting them with both the story and the response to their outrage?

Next they are admitting it's a temporary change. How is that a valid argument? "Read my world changing story where I change the direction of this favorite character, that we are going to undo in a year."  That is just insane.

They admit that this story does not grow the character.  Worse, the story they are trying to tell goes against the nature of the story of this character. What do you think of when you think of Captain America? I would say integrity is in that mix in a big way. Patriotism is also high on that list. A story of betrayal is a misuse of this character.

I have also seen many references to how "fans" have been angry at Thor being a woman, and other changes they have made over the years.  These may be connected, but not in the way they think.  In most cases, especially Thor being written as a women, the anger was at bad writing.  There are ways that could have pulled that off that I believe would have been very interesting.  Instead, it came across as forced. They were determined to make Thor a woman, and that was the focus.  There was no attempt to tell a good story around it.

It's bad writing. #DontAcceptBadWriting

Godzilla is really a frog! Ha! did I shock you?  Read my story about how Godzilla is really a frog.  You're probably saying no to both those sentences.  If you were to read my Frogzilla story, it's going to be because you want to know how I could pull that off as a writer, not because Frogzilla is interesting to you.  I, the writer, become the focus and the story is secondary, if that much.  This is not writing. This is cult of personality.  This is egotism in the fullest.

A good story teller, or writer, pulls you into the story.  If they write about characters like I try to, they make you love or hate the character, but you are invested in that character.  If they write about situations or worlds, they take you there and make you live it.

I actually saw the Marvel editor responsible for Captain America say something to the effect of, "we think people will read this to see how we get out of it."  Not how Steve get's of it, but how the writers and staff of Marvel pulls off this betrayal and keeps their readers.  They have become the focus of the story, not Steve, Red Skull, or even Sam Wilson.

By the way, I do not have a story about Frogzilla, nor any intention of ever writing one.

It's bad mythology.  #HeroesAreImportant

I read someplace that Superhero stories are our myth and legends.  Who doesn't look to myths such as King Arthur, Robin Hood, and many more for inspiration?  I read a story many years ago that made Robin Hood out to be a woman.  Well, Robin Hood was still Robin Hood, but he was an average archer, and not much of a hero.  All the epic things attributed to Robin were actually done by Maid Marian.

It was an interesting story, and obviously has stayed with me a long time.  But it's one of the few books by this author I only read once.  That's fine for fiction, but when I need inspiration that can be satisfied by a hero that stands up to an overbearing government the people suffer under, I don't even think of that story, but of the legend of Robin Hood.

Steve Rogers is an Epic Hero.  A true Paladin in every sense of the word, except the ones about being a knight of Charlemagne's or a D&D character.  But I think this is the point Marvel is trying to destroy.  They want to tell a story that says, "no one can be that good.  No one is worth being looked up to."

One of my favorite quotes comes from C.S. Lewis "Since it is so likely that they will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise you are making their destiny not brighter but darker. "  Marvel has set out to make this and the next generation's destiny darker.   There are no heroes; there are no brave knights to fight, or save, the dragons; heroic courage is for chumps.  I think of people who have done something heroic saying they simply thought about what would someone like Sturm would do.  

I choose that hero because I heard a story from the Dragonlance authors, who gave them his medal and told them when he was in the situation that earned that medal, his thoughts were, "What would Sturm do."  It left them speechless.  Me as well.

Marvel's mindset destroys that world.  This doesn't just make me sad.  This makes me angry, furious, incensed, enraged, and infuriated.

It's a political hit job. #PromoteGoodIdeas

You probably scoffed a little at the subheading.  "Rik, why bring politics into this."

I didn't.  The editor responsible for this travesty has said at least a couple of times that Nick was chosen for this project because of all his political knowledge.  Unless they have removed it by now, wikipedia says that Nick Spencer was a politician, a Democrat, before he became a full time writer for Marvel.  There are tweets posted by Nick about how evil Republicans are.  You cannot get a more bias political hack than Nick Spencer.

The story comes out in a presidential election year.  If you don't believe politics have influenced this story, and that this story is not meant to influence politics, you are not paying attention.

There is a segment of the population who does not like the people and institutions I believe are good.  Patriotism is considered bad form, unless you can redefine patriotism to agree with your bias.  The founding fathers are all evil white men who should be ignored as much as possible, unless their words can be twisted to your bias.  The constitution is a moldy irrelevant document, unless it can be made to support your bias. Captain America is a backstabbing turncoat, unless he can be corrupted towards your bias.

I'm tired of the attacks.  I intend on fighting back in the only way I know how.  I will write about good things.  I will, with respect, call out those I see degrade good institutions.  I will promote those concepts that I find good and worthy.

I will not be Hydra.

Mostly successful FreeBSD implementation

Decided to go back to FreeBSD on an old PC I was given.  I've always enjoyed FreeBSD and this would be a chance to get reacquainted.

I also thought that this would be a great blog post for my work blog; setting up a Java development environment on a older PC using FreeBSD.  It would be a great alternative to Linux for those that don't appreciate Windows or OSX, or have an older PC they want to use for development.

After a couple of frustrating days, I've decided not to write that blog entry.

Don't get the wrong idea. I still very much like FreeBSD, and am writing this post on that very machine, which is finally running FreeBSD.  I always remember that it takes a few days to get a Desktop environment up and running on FreeBSD.  This was no different.  It took about 4 installs of FreeBSD to get desktop that worked.

Since I knew this would likely be the case, I tried both PC-BSD and GhostBSD.  Both had graphically installers and claimed they would install a desktop version of FreeBSD.  PC-BSD also had a few features I wanted to try out, especially the support for jails (more on jails later).

I wish someone would develop a good configuration tool for XOrg and not force the user to plod through the configuration.

Neither would install to this computer.  PC-BSD and GhostBSD both failed during the first install with errors that were not helpful at all. I got PC-BSD to finally install, but then on reboot, the system simply went to a black screen.  If you are interested in FreeBSD for the first time, I still highly suggest these projects to get your started.  Unfortunately, they did not work for me.

Finally, I got the standard install to work with the Mate desktop.   I had intended on getting Gnome 3 to work, and a couple of others for when I wanted a more spartan environment. I'll work with this for a while until I can gradually get other desktops to work.

Why FreeBSD, especially since it seem to be giving me trouble?  I've always like it once I get it running.  I believe it's well laid out and as stable as it can be.

I also wanted to work with two new features.  ZFS, which is a fantastic file system, and Jails.  Jails allows you to partition off part of the system so it does not have access to the rest of the system.  You can run a test app server in a jail and not worry about changing the configurations on your development server, for instance.  With ZFS, you can template the jails so that they can be created and destroyed quickly.

Since I finally have a (somewhat) working system, I will still work on doing those things.  And I hope others do to, but until the base system is easier to configure for a graphical environment, I'll keep that suggests to those who are experienced, or want to experience another operating system.

D&D Is 40 years old

There are numerous posts on the fact that Dungeons and Dragons was first published forty years ago.  Wizards of the Coast, the current owners of the game have an article and video from the Father of Forgotten Realms, Ed Greenwood, here.

Seems like a good time to think about the game and my own history with it.

Like a lot of people about my age, who have played role-playing games, Dungeons and Dragons was my first.  I don't remember if I bought my first game before I played it, or played it first.

I bought the Basic D&D game at a toy store in Edgewater Mall, in Biloxi Ms.  I still remember seeing the box set in the store and thinking my friends would find this to be cool.

My first actually game would have been in 1980. I remember that we had some downtime in band class because it was the end of the year, and we had nothing to prepare for.  We were pretty much left alone to find something to do during that hour, as long as we didn't get too rowdy.  Somebody brought the game and some dice with them and I sat in on campaign that was already underway.  I had no idea what I was doing, so they had me roll up a magic user, and I remember the DM gave me a necklace of magic missiles.

In the game, we started off in a bar; pretty standard stuff.  Somehow we got into a bar fight, and within just a couple of rounds, my character was dead.  So basically I got to play all of about 10 minutes, not including rolling up the first character and then rolling a second character that never got a chance to play.  I hope it is needless to say that I never played with that DM again.

So, a year or so went by and I found the Advanced Dungeon and Dragon rules and began getting a few friends interested in the game.  I think I started out as the Dungeon Master (DM), but occasionally one of my friends would run a game.  I started out as a terrible DM.  I remember I didn't read the map of the dungeon they were in correctly and the map they tried to make from my descriptions was no where near accurate.  I also remember in later games, I would prepare for what I thought they would do that night, and almost inevitably they would take a turn that would take them someplace else entirely.  I had to get good at improvising on the fly.  Probably why I still do it when teaching, etc.

We also made up so many house rules, I basically had to relearn the game later on when I played with other groups.

I also, very vividly, remember one week that we had a break from school.  I had tested for my brown belt in Shotokan the weekend before, and had gotten it, and I guess I was so psyched from that I setup a game every night that week.  I didn't realize I had done that until one of my friends pointed it out at the end of the week.

Up until this point, I had only played D&D, or AD&D.  I had found Zocchi's in Gulfport, a warehouse sized distributor of games and was interested in other games, but I moved to Georgia then joined the Air Force soon after.

After being stationed at Offutt AFB, in Omaha, for a while, some of my roommates and I started gaming together.  We would trade off on running the game.  I believe we had advanced to using the AD&D v2.0 rules at this point.

I'm not sure if I would have been interested in the SCA had it not been for D&D or not, but soon after this, I did find and join.  And found more gamers than you can shake a stick at (and I've shaken and swung a stick at many of them).

During this time, I found it funny that all my dice were bought in Omaha, but were distributed out of Zocchi's in Gulfport, the warehouse/distributor I mentioned before.  Kind of a connection to home, in a way.  Ok, I'm weird that way.

My knight invited me to join in the group he was involved with.  They weren't playing D&D at the time, but were actually playing Space Opera.  I played with that group for quite a number of years.  We did use the AD&D rules a few times, but also played many other games including Space Opera, Shadowrun, and the Hero system.  D&D, Space Opera, and Shadowrun remain among my favorite RPG's (I'm not calling them pencil and paper or tabletop rpg's. Just realize that's what I'm talking about).

I picked up the D&D 4.0 rules a couple of years ago and played a few games with my kids.  For now, that is pretty much the end of my gaming.  In a few years, when the kids have their own lives and I have copious amounts of spare time, I might find a group again.

So far, I've played the Basic D&D rules, AD&D 1.0, 2.0, and 4.0.

I don't know if the friends I've made during gaming are lifelong friends because of gaming.  But I appreciate the friends I have made because of this game.

Should comic books be real time.

Do you think comic books should go with real time stories?  Currently, most of the majority of popular Marvel characters were introduced in the 60's, with a few very popular ones introduced in the late 70's and 80's.  Still for them less than 10 years has passed.  Entire story lines have had to be retconned or forgotten completely to make the characters make sense.
DC is even worse, with many of their characters going back much farther.  The new 52 has made that less a problem, as the characters are starting now, but it costs us much of their history.  That history is dear to many of us, as much as the characters themselves.  Also, are they going to have to do this again in 10 years when the fact the characters don't age again becomes a problem?
Also, would the characters be anywhere as near as iconic had they aged.  Peter Parker was 15 in 1962.  He'd be 66 this year, if he survived the punishment his life dealt him.  You figure he probably could have adventured until mid 20's when mundane life would have curtailed a lot of that, and may be 30's or so when the damage to his body would have sidelined him drastically.  So late 70's early 80's and he becomes at best a supporting character for another hero.
The same argument could be made for Batman, but there we're looking at him retiring in the 40's or early 50's.  But Batman I could see handing off the title to someone else, which he has done a couple of times now.  To make someone else Spider-man is way to contrived (oh, this guy just happens to have the same accident with a spider, unless you take JMS's storyline into account or the "May Day" Parker stories).
As time goes by, the whole thing is just going to get worse.  So do you think comics should just have their characters age in real time?
I can see several ways to do it.  DC could do it now with the new 52.  Just declare from this point, they will age in real time.
Marvel could do the same.  Reboot the entire universe and declare that it will be real time.  Someone online also suggested that they could wake up and realize that they were born in the 50's and 60's but were only in their 20's and someone big is messing with them.  Could be a good storyline along the level of Secret Wars.
Personally I'd like to see Marvel start a new imprint where they write stories now as if it had been real time all along.  What would that world look like?  Stark would have retired and passed on the Iron Man mantle at least two generations ago.  Parker would be retired; would May Parker (his daughter not his Aunt) have replaced him? Would she have retired and passed on the mantle by now?
Thor would still be around. Probably Dr Strange and Iron Fist as well.  Would we find out the combination of the Super-Soldier Serum and deep hibernation has made Steve Rogers nearly immortal?
Who would have replaced all the heroes who are not immortal?

Trying Blogger Again.

I was requesting more blogger functionality in Google + and +Vernon McGuffee mentioned Blogger.  I had stopped blogging here because I was doing all my posting about the things I thought about over there.  Since there was no good connection between the two, I simply stopped posting here.

Since Vernon mentioned blogger, I came back over to check it out, and found that Google had intend make some significant upgrades to the service, including some to tie the two services together.

So, for the time being, I will be using this to write some of my longer, blog like, posts about things I'm thinking about.  This blog is typically will likely be more about "personal" stuff, like my hobbies, writing, celiac issues, general technology, and the like.  I already have other blogs, one for Coding where I blog about programming and one for political posts.  I may even start another about Theology.

Feedback is welcome.

Scones on the grill

(Originally published on Buzz Aug 1)


After cooking outside on the Weber for lunch to keep the kitchen cool, I began thinking about gluten free scones and whether they could be done on the grill. Then it became an obsession. If you're looking for a short story, it was a complete success. Here's what I did. 

First, the dough was made from Pamela's Baking and Pancake Mix. This is a must have for a gluten free household. You can find the recipe here http://www.pamelasproducts.com/recipe_frames.html, look under Breakfast & Lunch for Scones. We replace the currants with cinnamon chips. Next time we use the grill, I think we'll add dried apples. 

Once the dough is made, and the grill is still hot (I wanted to wait until the fire was burning clean, so as not to get too much smoke), fold pieces of aluminum foil into triangular pans. Mine were about 6 inches on the longest side. I also did one 6 inch square pan that I then cut into two triangles with an additional piece of foil. Both types worked well. They don't need to be able to hold a liquid in, as the dough is pretty thick, but they do need to be able to hold the rising dough in. Don't fill them completely. Mine barely touch the sides when I filled the pans, but completely filled them when the scones were done. 

I put them in the covered grill (a Weber charcoal grill), not directly over the coals and cooked them for about 15 minutes, turning them every five. Once they are done all the way through, I pulled them off the grill and let them sit for about five minutes. The aroma was fantastic, and made it hard to wait. But as Alton Brown would say, "your patience will be rewarded". 

This will become a standard when we use the grill. I always hate to just let the coals die down. And will probably become a staple when we camp (those of you in the SCA near me, come by and ask for one). 


Only one lasted long enough to get it's picture taken.  It didn't last much longer.

Learning to love the plateaus

My Sensei, Vic, has been talking about the way we learn things.   My own understanding of what he is saying (very briefly); as we learn we have long stretches where we just don't feel like things are going well at all (plateaus). Then everything seems to come together and we seem to make sudden and drastic improvements.  Those end all too soon, and we usually feel like we're sliding back a little, into another plateau.  That plateau will always be higher than the previous one. It may not feel like it, because everyone around us has improved as well.

I've been at Aikido for about a year and a half (minus three months for a broken arm).  Already having a black belt in another Martial Art (Shotokan Karate-do), it's hard starting over as a white belt.  I hate putting it like that, because I fear someone will misunderstand and think that the color of the belt is what I'm worried about.  The color of the belt is just someone else's acknowledgment of the wearer's skill.  What's been hard for me is being at that skill level.  I may be woefully out of practice in Shotokan, but I understand the techniques.  Until just recently, I felt like I'm fumbling around in Aikido (like a pregnant yak).  I'm not saying that I've come anywhere near mastering Aikido, but I'm more comfortable with it now than I was even six months ago.

In SCA fighting, I'm what we call in Calontir (a Kingdom in the Midwest) a Fyrdman. If you are more comfortable with Martial Arts terms, I would put it around a purple belt (Huscarl for brown to 2nd or 3rd degree black belt and Knight for above that).  I've felt that I've been in a plateau for a long time, but I think that might be illusionary because of the level of people I've been fighting for the last few years.  If I show any signs of improving, they take it up another level, and most of the people I fight have many levels above that.  It's a Martial Artist's dream.

And it's not just a Martial Art's issue. After 20 years in IT, it's easy to get to a plateau and just coast.  I've never been able to do that.  If I'm not learning, I'm dying.  This past two weeks, I really had to step up and stretch myself.  For all of that 20 years, my work has been on the server side, no matter the language.  Most of my code is not meant to have a visual component to put in front of the user.  It's been mostly for crunching data, or sending it around the network.  But I was asked to take over some Applet code, and had a lot of fun doing it.  Yes, I am strange enough that working an extra 10 hours a week to get it done was fun (I just can't do that too often).  I'm at a point now that I have to start thinking of the next level.

I've always hated the plateaus.  They range from boring to frustrating. Techniques take 2 or 3 (or more) attempts to make work, code doesn't work like I expected, blocks I thought would work, don't.   I come home with the bruises or extra hours of work because I'm attempting to do something that is just out of my reach.  However, they never stay out of my reach (except that flat snap of Martino's that I may never learn to block and Hassan is just too fast to be human).  The plateau is where I'm learning to reach.  The upswings, where everything comes together, are fun, but they don't go on forever.  Sooner or later it's time to level out and learn what's next.  I've just got to learn to love the process.

Ubuntu let me down, but let me recover

Ok, I've been running Ubuntu Linux since November.  The only real complaint I've had about it is the sound system turns itself off occasionally if more than one user is logged on (very irritating).

Today, I tried to update to the latest Release Candidate.  I had the time in the afternoon, even though my evening was going to be full.

After doing the upgrade, my system refused to boot.  This has never happened while using FreeBSD or OpenSolaris.  And since I'm very bad about doing backups, it's beyond a little irritating.

Since a lot of my files are "in the cloud", it's not a fatal problem.  However, I cannot find the original Windows install disk (which I run in Virtual Box).  Since I have some work I am forced to do in Windows from time to time, that is a big problem.  I may be forced to shell out money to get Win7.

I was able to install the old version of Ubuntu along side the new and broken version, which gives me access to the filesystem.  Currently doing the backups I should have been doing, and then I'll wiped the disk, do a fresh install, and restore the data.  Hopefully, before too much longer, I'll be back to normal.

Stargate Universe; I'm done

Ok, I really really wanted to like Stargate Universe.  I like the franchise a great deal.  The idea of being trapped in a distance galaxy trying to find their way home did not deter me from wanting to like it, even if it has been done already in Star Trek.  I was hoping for a SG1 type team to get out there and show what we can do.  Explore a little, fight a little, do some techie things.

Then I found out they were going to borrow heavily from Battlestar. I like my stories to have heroes.  In Battlestar, I felt that the original ('80s) story of tragedy and how humans can rise above it had been changed into one of how low could humans go.  How base could they be. blech.  Oh, I understand that Science Fiction is all about the speculative and should expand our conversations, blah, blah, blah.  And I agree.  Make a movie, write a short story, heck even a novel.  But a series?  Come on, it' gets old after the first couple of episodes. If I cannot connect with a character and see some growth, I might as well be watching CSPAN.

And sure enough, SGU became the same thing.  Instead of a bold leader who keeps his people together, we have a idiot who traps his most experience techie on a planet, then tries to cover it up and in the process kill another crew member.  That same techie killing someone because he thinks it's a good idea. A action hero type who's brain is firmly set between his legs.

Lt James cannot carry this whole show.

In the last episode, we see the communication stones fail, and we never find out why.  No one is even curious.  Are we in the same universe with Dr. McKay?

In the next episode, the civilians lock the military out and take over the ship.  How in the world can this resolved in any way that is remotely believable?  Is the military going to say, "Oh, we didn't know how serious you were, you can run the ship?"  They will have to let them out sometime, and the military is going to want to resume command, and now they cannot trust the civilians at all. The civilians can already not trust the military because the commander is insane. (And the guy on Earth who wants to take over is not any better).

I'll say it again, I like heroes in my stories.  SGU, I'm done.  May be next season.

Encryption should be built in.

Why has encryption not become part of the base operating system for the most used systems out there?  If you are not aware of applications like Pretty Good Privacy or the free alternative GnuPG, Google them. I highly recommend getting and installing one.

Why is encryption needed? Well there are obvious uses (preventing other people of reading your documents or email, unless they are the recipient). Here are two real life examples where having an encryption system would be beneficial. A while back, I had a problem with an insurance policy. I emailed the company and they were very good about getting it straightened out, but in doing that, they emailed another company and cc me. I was horrified by the fact that my Social Security number was in the email. In another case, I did some part time work for a friend. He asked for my ssn to fill out a 1099. We exchanged public keys and I emailed my number to him.   Since only he and I can unlock that document, I worry about it a lot less.

I've worked for companies that deal with personal information. The current work around for this problem that I've seen is to upload the email that contains the information to a website and emailing the recipient a URL and a password to access it. In my opinion, this is a very cumbersome solution.

What I would like to see? Encryption built into the operating system. When you install (or launch for the first time for pre-installed systems), the system could generate a private and public key on the spot. Apple could upload the public key to the users Me.com account automatically. Microsoft could build a keyserver overnight (or buy one). Ubuntu can use GnuPG's servers. All the major email applications already have plugins for both PGP and GPG (gets confusing to type, but those are two different products). It would not take much for the vendors to incorporate the ability to lookup someone's public key, encrypt a message, or even just sign a message.

Signing a message brings up an interesting solution. If users begin signing their emails (signing proves that a document comes from the person sending without alteration. It will show the name of the signer and if the document has been changed in transit). If the signer does not match the sender, the email can be flagged. If the signer is in your contacts list, the email can be trusted more than others. It would make it easier to spot spam or phishing emails. We can start doing that now, with the downloads I've already mentioned, but most of your friends, and certainly your mother, are not going to download them, set them up, and start using them. If they are built into the operating system, it much more likely for people to start using it.

One issue to be solved is the online email programs. It would be simple for Google, Yahoo, and others to use the encryption keys on your computer to encrypt and sign email, but you would have to have those keys on every computer you use to send and receive email. That's not feasible. The other solution is to upload your private key to your email provider. That's should make you stop for a second, and probably reject the idea. But think about this; they already have access to all your unencrypted email now. If you had two sets of keys, one on your personal and secure computer, that you had people encrypt stuff you are just rightfully paranoid about and a set that you upload to your provider. You wouldn't be able to read the stuff sent with the extra ultra super secret key on another computer, but that's why it's extra ultra super secret. In most cases, your provider has a lot more on it's mind than snooping through your personal email (and if your trying to hide stuff from the government, give up).  If your key gets compromised, regen a new one and upload it. Heck, I suggest doing that every 3 months anyway.  Set the expiration date for 3 months and generate a new key quarterly.  That way if you lose the private key (hard drive dies, etc), people will stop using the old one after a while.

Google, please be one of the first and build this into Android. Thanks.

Request to Apple; move iTunes to the cloud

To the company known as Apple,

I'm possibly not exactly your target customer, or in the demographic you are going after (those with enough money to buy new electronics every year or so).  But, I have owned 3 Macs (a Ti Powerbook, a iMac, and a Powermac) and 3 iPods.  The Macs have finally died, they are about 8 years old, but the iPods are running just fine.  Well not exactly fine, because I cannot update 2 of them at all, and it's a pain to update the 3rd (have I mentioned my Macs have died).

The computer I use for Java programming is still working, but it's running Ubuntu. I've tried updating the iPods using Windows under VirtualBox. It more or less works for one, mine which is older, but not for either of my kids', which I am more concerned about.  And I would like to buy one for my wife, but not until I can update the other ones.

I think iPods are at this point the best portable mp3/video/podcast players out there.  I'm using my Droid for playing podcasts at work, but it's not as seamless as the iPod is/was.  And I worry about running the battery out on my phone by listening to music.

I have no desire to run Windows next to the metal on any machine I have at home.  I promise you, as soon as I have enough money to purchase a Mac Mini or an iMac, money that is not already demanded by car repairs, house repairs, etc., etc., etc, I will send it your way.  To get by, I'm considering getting a netbook running Win7. I kinda really don't want to (sorry to whine).  I've been Windows free (except for virtual environments) at home for most of my career.  I have to deal with it at work, and I'd like to leave it there.

So, Apple, how can you help me out. Move iTunes to the cloud. Give me a web interface and enough disk space to store my mp3's (seriously, you have it all there anyway, behind the scenes, just give me a link to my purchases in your catalog, along with some extra space for any mp3's I've uploaded or leverage the remote access ability in Me.com and let me stream it from a Mac in my house).  It should be possible to access the iPod using Flash, Java, or html5.  And let me stream my collection to my work pc, home pc, Droid, iPod touch, iPhone, etc.  I know that might cut into your electronics sells, but you're going to charge me for the service (free would be great, but I know your here to make money, not provide me with goodies).

So, come on Apple, help me out. I don't want to change my brand of media players, but it may be a while before I can afford another Mac. If instead of moving iTunes to the cloud you want to put out a $250 iMac/iNetBook/iTablet/iWhatever, I can be ok with that.

Thanks for listening.

This is the Droid I was looking for

I've got a blog, so I guess I should review things.

A week ago, Verizon  gave me enough incentive to get the new Motorola Droid.  For a very long time, I've wanted a device to carry around that had the full array of communication tools.  I hate talking on the phone (unless it's to my wife). I much prefer to communicate via email, and lately I've keeping in touch using Twitter and Facebook.  Google Voice has given me a great voice mail system.  As I'm in front of the computer a lot, it's usually not a problem, but it also makes the times I'm away worse.

Also, I love to read.  Pretty much anything and I'm a big user of Google Reader and Read It Later for work research and for several interests (tech stuff, history, martial arts, writing).

When the iPhone came out, I figured this would be it.  The tool I had been looking for.  But, between the cost, which I could not afford at that time, and the fact it was on AT&T, which I did not want to return to, I never got one.  Since then, I've been unhappy with some of Apple's handling of the iPhone, specifically locking it against true multitasking and the issues with the app store.

So I got really excited about the release of the Droid.  After that build it, you just know there was going to be some disappointment.

Well, first I have to say I love it.  I even love the name, Droid.  How geeky can you get?

Before I go much further, I'll let you know a few dislikes I have with it.

1. No access to Google Wave.  I actually have been keeping notes on things like my likes and dislikes of the Droid on Wave, and it would be really nice to be able to access it from the handset.
   
2. The plugin for the recharger/data port is right below the keyboard, and it is difficult to use while plugged in.
3. Occasionally does not respond. I guess this is one of the downsides to multitasking.
4. Battery life is horrible.  Properly another downside to multitasking.
5. The biggest one right now is, if I want to use the alarm and be able to hear the phone if it rings, but don't want to hear notifications for chat, email, messaging, or Google Voice, I have to go turn each those off individually, and quit Twidriod.  It would be nice if there were one place to turn all of those off. Since I use the phone as my alarm clock, and my wife would wake up to every notification even if the phone were downstairs, I have to go through this every night and every morning, turn them back on.

Now specific things I really like:

1. Once again, the name.
2. The first app I downloaded was Google Sky.  My wife and daughter both decided they needed one after just seeing that app.  It is awesome.
3. The notification system, even with the above problem.  It simply rocks.  If an email comes in, just pull down the notification bar and click on that notification.  Chat, messages, etc, all in one place.  I love this feature.
4. The Computer interface just mounts on the desktop. Has worked just fine on both Windows and Linux, and I'm pretty sure it would work under other *nix's and OSX. To copy music or images over, just copy them. Put them in any folder structure and the music player just finds them.
   After losing my iMac to a power failure, I've had problems updating our iPods.  Just having a simple disk mount interface to the phone is a wonderful thing.

When I first began thinking I wanted a single communication device, two things I did not want were an Internet browser and a music player.  I didn't want to browse websites with a 4 inch screen.  Thought it would be terrible.  And I had an iPod. I did not want to risk running my battery dry listening to music, and not have a phone when I needed it.

Having said that, and also having said I love to read, I find the web browsing to be very decent. The screen is gorgeous.  Even my wife commented on that.  I broke my glasses a few weeks ago, so it's fun to watch me hold the droid at arms length sometimes, but I often don't.  Reading blogs, news stories, etc, is very nice.

And my iPod has started having problems.  It's over 4 years old, and probably has a couple more years left in it, but I wanted to try the Droid as a music/podcast player for a few days. First off, I have to have the Droid plugged in whenever I'm at my desk or I don't think the battery would last half the day under that drain.  It's not quite as good at playing music as the iPod, I've heard a few skips I've never heard on the iPod, but it is still very good at it.  More than good enough for what I need.

I think the Pandora app may be growing on me.  I resisted downloading it because I didn't want to stream music to my phone.  Leave that for the computer.  But I did it recently and found that it is awesome.  Pick an artist you like, and you get lots of great music.  I've tried Phil Colins, Huey Lewis and the News, and Steven Curtis Chapman and have been very pleased.  For a while at least, I'm trying to only run it at home where I have Wi-fi.

All in all, I'm incredibly happy.  Hopefully next month I can afford to upgrade my wife's phone to one.

Writing a novel with online tools

One thing I left off my last post on where to write was online tools.  Online tools as a category have several benefits and different ones bring different benefits.

I don't tend to write on one computer.  Often I will write during my lunch break, instead of leaving the building.  I can bring the document I'm working on a thumb drive, but most employers frown on using personal memory sticks on a work computer, for several reasons.

Google Docs is one place I've thought about.  It does have the benefit of allowing me to access it wherever I am, as long as I'm near a computer.  I can also share a read-only copy with my first readers, but they would have no way to comment in the same document.  That would be good or bad.

Google Wave offers some promise.  It has many of the same features as Google Docs.  The one drawback is sharing with first readers. There is (currently) no way to restrict another participant in a wave to prevent them from updating the original blip, or preferable, marking their updates (i.e. margin comments).  I could get around this by writing in one wave, and then cloning that wave for the first readers to be able to edit.  The other drawback is there is currently no way to print (that I've seen) from Google Wave.  Since printing it in a specific format is the final outcome (publisher have guidelines for this), this can be a big drawback.  I can probably get around this by cutting and pasting the entire document into a OpenOffice document.

One drawback I have not mentioned for online tools is the chance of it being stolen.  Frankly I don't worry about it much.  It's just as likely someone would steal a printed copy someone left lying around.  If someone steals the idea and makes a better story (or actually finishes a story, which I have yet to do), good for them.  Ideas are not copyrightable.  Plagiarism is another story, and I don't think that often ends well for the plagiarist or their publisher.

Where to write

I'm starting a new writing project, and once again I'm stumbling on where to write.  In the past I used straight text files, TeX, HTML, Word, and Open Office to start a project.  They all have their strengths and weaknesses.

I dislike using word processors for the act of writing because I feel that a) they get in the way too much by being too helpful (auto spelling corrections, auto capitalising, grammar checking, etc) which really distract from the act getting words on the screen, and b) I don't like the large files, mostly binary, that they generate.  For formatting the final result for sending to a publisher, they can't be beat.  I know I've tried.  HTML has the spec for headers and pagination that would solve that problem, but no (free) browsers I know of implement those tags.  Also, moving it to something that I can put online becomes harder.

TeX is just too hard to use unless I am doing it all the time.  I keep have to relearn how to do even some basic stuff every time.   And to be completely truthful, I can't stand the fonts.  I keep reading that you can change them, but have never read anything that says how.

HTML I've kinda touched on.  I do get tired of writing the tags, but my main issue is it is impossible to format the final project with the correct headers (especially the first page) the way current browsers are implemented.  It's kinda nice though that the format is an afterthought.  For example, I can label something and if I leave the formatting alone, it'll be bold.  Or I can change the css file I set up to make it 1 pt larger or all caps, when I'm ready to print.
Straight text has no formatting by definition and sooner or later I'm going to want to make something bold or italics or indented or something I can't do with text.

So does anyone have suggestions?

A week with Ubuntu

So I've been on Ubuntu for  nearly a week.  Here are my thoughts and progress so far.

First I'm going to through out my dislikes.  Things that just have not gone right.

• Tweetdeck will not run. I get an error that says that I have one of the few machines that Air does not like, and they are working with Adobe on it.  This could have more to do with the machine than Ubuntu, but I'm sure it would work under that commercial operating system.
  
• It has locked up on us three times now.  Seems to be something with X. The computer keeps running, and at least once I was able to recover without rebooting.  May have something to do with having multiple people logged on at the same time.
  
• Lost the sound a couple of times. Have not figured this one out.  Playing around with the sound settings has gotten it back.  This also may have something to do with multiple logins. At least once, I've gotten sound back by switching to another user and turning up the sound on that login.
• Wireless network was not setup right out of the box.  It did not work at all under OpenSolaris, so it's not something I can't do without in the short term, but I would really like to  get working.
  

Successes or just things I've liked.

• Installing VirtualBox was easy and straight forward and ran the Windows images I've created under OpenSolaris just fine.  This was probably my biggest worry as I did not want to have to redo this up just now.  I've got some work to do in those images starting next week.
  
• Gnucash installed directly and reads the gnucash file from the old system.
  
• Guest user allows my daughter to access Facebook, etc while I'm on without messing with whatever I'm working on.
• Switching allows other family members to access there side, once again without disturbing whatever I'm working on.
  
• My wife plugged the digital camera in, in her word's "something for photos turned on when I hooked up the camera. I don't know what I did exactly, but I got the pictures posted". That's what I'm looking for in a family computer.  Yes Mac OS X has a better experience there, but I don't currently have a Mac, now do I?
  
• Went to set up the printer, only to find that Ubuntu had done it already, without even telling me or better yet asking me any questions about it.
• Can finally use Chrome natively at home. Although it's not nearly as polished as the Windows version.

I installed Java and Netbeans, but have not had much of a chance to work with them.  That will change this week as I have to update an application for doing Knights Marshal reports.  MySql seems to have installed fine, but same issue.


I installed Netbeans from the download from Sun.  Java I installed from Ubuntu's Software Center.  I was a little unhappy is was a minor version behind, but not enough to do a manual install.


At this point, I need an operating system that I can use without having to work with it too much.  Like the printer issue.  It took me days to finally get enough information together to install it the first time on OpenSolaris and hours on FreeBSD.  I like the research and like geeking around with the system, but don't have the time right now.  I need something that is going to cause me less problems.  And, in case someone brings it up, I always have problems with Windows.  My work machine runs mostly fine because the IT staff there has it locked down.  I don't want to run like that here.  Yes a Mac would be great.  Let me know when you can send one over.  Otherwise, I will have to wait until I can afford one again.



Right now it's too early to know if this will be a long term success, but short time certainly has been.

Moved to Ubutnu finally

I've mentioned before that I have never had a chance, or desire, to run Linux in any long term way.  I've played with both Ubuntu and Mandrake (before the owners of the comic got it's name changed), but I've mostly run FreeBSD at home and the last year and a half I've been running OpenSolaris.

Last night, after much frustration, I finally got Ubuntu installed next to the metal on my laptop.  I say next to the metal, because I have been running it in Virtual Box for about a year.  The frustrations have mostly been around backing up all my data, and then I found out I had downloaded and burned a cd with the i386 version of Ubuntu, which would not boot.  It took me a while, but I finally found the amd64 version.  After that, things went really well.

So far, I've gotten everyone a login, setup NFS to the FreeBSD box so I can copy files from the backup, and gotten access to my email, etc.  My first impressions are that it is much nicer looking and that it feels faster.  I say feels, because I don't think it actually is faster, but the interface has a snapper feel.  I worry that the UI is optimized to the detriment of the stability of the system. I.e., does it cache a lot of data in member instead of making sure it makes it to the disk.  In that case, what happens if the computer crashes (a worry I have because this Gateway laptop overheats a lot).

Tonight I'll install a Java development environment and really customize things the way I want them.  So far, I'm really pleased.

Moving data to prepare for opsys change

I have a lot of data to move off my laptop before I change operating systems from OpenSolaris to Ubuntu. I had finally figured out how to format an external (usb) drive to fat32.  My plan was to tar the data and copy it to the dos partition, then copy it back when I changed systems.  I immediately ran into the problem of the file size limit being 4g. 

So, I took about an old iMac that had died in the last power spike we had.  I took the hard drive from that and put it in my 10 year of Dell that had been running FreeBSD, and put FreeBSD back on it.  I moved the external drive over to it and formatted all but 60g to FreeBSD's file system.  Backing up the home directories off the laptop took just short of 24 hours.  This was because of a combination of some large files, including 3 nearly 20g virtual box images, a very old and slow network card on the Dell, and slow (by today's standards) usb on the Dell.

The data is finally backed up, so tonight I will change to Ubuntu.  Then I will setup automatic backups to the FreeBSD box, so if I decide Ubuntu was not the right direction, I won't have to go through this again. 

I may also begin looking around for a newer, old computer to replace the Dell.  I should be able to get something with faster usb and a faster network card for not a lot of money.

Gluten Free at Bo Lings Chinese

I've enjoyed eating at Bo Lings for a while, and after this will very much continue to.  I contacted them to see  if they could publish a gluten free menu.  This is the great and very helpful response I got:

Thanks so much for your inquiry regarding gluten free options at Bo Lings!  Soy sauce does have traces of gluten in it, so depending on the severity of your allergy, you may or may not be able to tolerate some of our menu items with soy sauce in them.  Since you are able to have the Gong Bao Chicken, most of our other stir-fried dishes should be alright for you.  We do however, offer a wide variety of menu items that do not have soy sauce in them!  Any of our entrees that are made with "white sauce" will not have soy sauce in them, nor will they have any flour.  These are chicken stock-based sauces thickened with cornstarch.  A few of our "white sauce" entrees include Sauteed Chicken with Vegetables, Shrimp with Cashews, Jade Shrimp, and Sauteed Mixed Vegetables.  Also any of our Fried Rice dishes cooked without soy sauce, such as Fresh Vegetable Fried Rice, Young Chow Fried Rice, or Chicken Fried Rice cooked with white rice, will be gluten free.  Please just let your server know about your allergy, and he or she will work with the manager to make sure your meal is prepared properly!

 
I had been avoiding the white sauces because I didn't know what was in them.  The next time I'm there, I will be trying one of them.

So, whether you are Gluten intolerant or not, please go and have some great Chinese food and keep them in business (actually they are really good and I don't think are in any danger of going out of business, but you will enjoy their food, so go).

Where'd all that data come from?

Backing up my laptop so I can move over to Ubuntu over the weekend was an epic failure.  If it were possible to roll below a 1, I would have (D&D reference for you non-gamers).

Between the iMac that died a month ago, which I have the backup data on an external drive, to the data I have on the laptop itself, it's huge.  I gave up on the idea of burning it all to cd's.

I have an external drive with about 200G.  60G is formatted to zfs.  About 40G is BIG-DOS (I thought it was fat32).  The rest is a leftover from when I had FreeBSD on it.  I tried to reformat the rest at fat32, but could find no way to do that under OpenSolaris; the existing dos partition was created either under Windows, which will no longer format a disk that size in fat32 or FreeBSD.  I tried to format it with a Windows laptop I had access to, and somehow made the original 40G partition (slice?) unusable. 

At that point, I pretty much got frustrated and decided to work on the backup sometime this week.  There really should be a good way to backup files and reload them under a different operating system.

Ubuntu or bust

In a previous post I talked about how I was frustrated with my current operating system and ready to replace it.  I'm going to try to get that done this weekend, although I will be out of town Friday and Saturday, which leaves me Sunday afternoon.

From the title you can tell what I'm planning on installing, but let's go through my reasons.

I've not been a GNU/Linux fan in the past.  My first *nix work experience was with Solaris in the late '90's.  My first home *nix experience was with FreeBSD, which I've run for almost 10 years until the computer it was running on died a couple of months ago.  So why did I decide on Ubuntu instead of a BSD system like PC-BSD? Let's look at my requirements and wants.

Primary, must haves:

• Compile and Run Java applications
• Ability to run Windows on a virtual machine, especially to compile and run Java applications that require Windows and possibly C# down the road.
  
• Features for the family, which for now shares this computer (video, music, facebook, email, etc).

Secondly, really want:

• Being able to logon as another user without having to log out myself.
• Wireless networking.
• Ability to run Gnucash without a virtual machine.
• Different formats of music and video to work more or less out of the box (mp3, asx, etc).
• Ability to update iPods.

There are some other features I'd like, such as being able to run Conky and TweetDeck. I also prefer Gnome to KDE (personal preference, don't get snippy with me).

I'm running Ubuntu in Virtual Box and it seems to give me much of what I need and want to do.  I looked at PC-BSD, and was a little turned off by the fact it runs KDE.  Also, I've used FreeBSD as a development platform before.  Yes, it will run Java, but it is difficult (or at least time consuming) to setup.  Virtual Box is relatively new for FreeBSD, but Sun has a Linux version.  Also, I've never been able to run a vmware image on FreeBSD, and I may have to do that at some point for a project coming up.  Finally, I really like the look of the newest version of Ubuntu.  They have done a really good job on the look and feel.

So, Sunday, during the game, I will start backing up all the data on my computer.  If that goes well, I hope to install Ubuntu.  Next week, it's back to making this machine earn a living.