Paul's Time Sink

24 hours of Google Reader Shared Items
links for October 2, 2008
NuevaSync
Virtual Machines
Moving to Windows
Vista on Mac mini
Insecure wifi
links for September 7, 2008
links for September 6, 2008
Squeezebox Boom

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Code Monkey Video

Paul Westbrook | 12 November, 2006 13:49

A while ago, I wrote about the song Code Monkey by Jonathan Coulton. A performance of this has been posted on YouTube. The next time he comes to the bay area, I hope we can go.

[via Jonathan Coulton's Blog]

Technorati tags: Code Monkey, Jonathan Coulton

wiDock

Paul Westbrook | 09 November, 2006 22:18

Since we have all of our music on our Mac mini, and the mini is not in a really accessible location, it is a hassle to synchronize our content to our iPods.  Right now, the Mac mini makes the volume that contains the music available through afp.  Each of our laptops mount the Mac mini drive, an the iTunes library access the content directly from the mounted volume.

The wiDock looks like something that could make this a lot easier.  In addition to being an iPod dock that has audio and video out, it also has built-in 802.11b/g and an ethernet port.  If you use the included software, you can sync iTunes with an iPod over a network.  This would allow us to keep the dock in our office, but still synchronize the iTunes library on the Mac mini in the living room.

 (More)

Technorati tags: dock, iPod, iTunes, Mac mini, USB, wiDock

Hacking Democracy

Paul Westbrook | 08 November, 2006 11:49

Last night, I watched Hacking Democracy.  This movie documents, in several ways, how Diebold voting machines can be "hacked" in order to change the results of an election.

I think the US government should require a open and transparent audit of all electronic voting machines.  Ideally, the software running on these machines would be required to be open source, so there would be complete transperancy to the code, but that is unlikely to happen

 (More)

Technorati tags: Diebold, documentary, electronic voting, Hacking Democracy

SeeThru Hard Case

Paul Westbrook | 08 November, 2006 00:46

Last week, my MacBook Pro, and me, fell down the stairs.  The computer is fine (and I am as well), but It made me want to get some additional protection for the computer.  I bought the clear SeeThru Hard Case for the MacBook Pro.  This case snaps over the laptop, while still allowing you to open and close, and have access to all of the ports.

[via TUAW]

Technorati tags: MacBook Pro, SeeThru Hard Case

timezone offset and apache/php

Paul Westbrook | 08 November, 2006 00:24

I noticed a strange thing last week.  After the time change for Daylight Saving time, the internal time on this blog was off.  When I entered a new post via xmlrpc, the resulting post would appear an hour in the future.

After some investigation, I realized that the date php command was returning the local time, but with the time zone offset that corresponds to before the time change.  Once I restarted apache, the offset got reported correctly.

Technorati tags: apache, date, Daylight Saving Time, php, xmlrpc

Privacy taken too far

Paul Westbrook | 07 November, 2006 23:24

My company uses Blue Shield as our health insurance provider.  I have been pretty unimpressed with them so far, especially compared to Great West, which we used at TiVo.  The latest annoyance occurred this week.

You can access both processed and pending claims on the Blue Shield web site.  I noticed that only a small subset  of our claims were appearing.  I sent them an email, and this was in their response:

We must be in compliance with privacy laws therefore you are only able to view your claims status on-line.

Each member of your family will need to register separately with a different username, password and their birthday in order to view their claim status.

So they want us to create an account for every one in the family, for privacy purpaces.  The funny thing is that when they send the paper confirmations for each claim, they are all addressed to me, and not to each individual.

 (More)

Technorati tags: Blue Shield, COPPA, Privacy

Blogger archiving responsibilities

Paul Westbrook | 07 November, 2006 19:59

Do bloggers have a responsibility to archive the content of posts that are linked to, so when the post becomes unreachable the information is still available? 

I linked to a forum post that described how to fix a problem where your iTunes library file became locked.  I didn't post the actual steps, as I didn't get permission from the author.  Then at some point later, the thread was removed from the forums at ipodlounge.  For a while it was available in Google Cache, but then it disappeared.  Now when people find my post from search engines, they can't find the instructions.

 (More)

Zero gravity water experiments

Paul Westbrook | 07 November, 2006 11:29

Boing Boing has a post that links to a video of an interesting experiments run by Don Pettit, on Expedition 6 to the International Space Station.

Technorati tags: Don Pettit, experiments, Expedition 6, Zero gravity

Ambient Clock

Paul Westbrook | 05 November, 2006 20:04

Now this is a device that I would love on my desk at work, if it ships.  The Ambient Clock is a clock that, in addition to displaying the time, also your schedule.  The clock would retrieve your schedule from Google Calendar, though Ambient's wireless network.

The really interesting thing is how it displays your schedule.  It shows the blocks for scheduled appointment around the circumference of the clock.  In addition it displays travel time to meetings as little dots running up to the appointment block.  (The travel time is calculated using Google Maps.)

When no appointments are close the clock glows a calm blue color.  This changes to a yellow shade, within 10 minutes to the event.  When an event is in progress, the clock is in a shade of orange.

 (More)

Technorati tags: Ambient Clock, Google Calendar, Google Maps

iCal - Google Calendar synchronization

Paul Westbrook | 03 November, 2006 23:44

Currently if you want to access a calendar with both Google Calendar and iCal, you can only share the calendar one way.  So if you want to make modifications in both places, you need to create two calendars.  One in iCal, and subscribe to it in Google Calendar.  Create other in Google Calendar and subscribe to it in iCal.

It looks like Spanning Sync will make this integration even better.  With Spanning Sync you can modify the calendars in either place, and have the changes reflected in the other.

It is not available yet, but will be entering a private beta next week, with a public beta after that.

[via TUAW]

Technorati tags: Google Calendar, iCal, Spanning Sync

polycarbonate wheels

Paul Westbrook | 03 November, 2006 23:06

I have seen a bunch of posts that mention the D'Vinci Forgiato Radurra wheels.  These are clear polycarbonate wheels that cost about $2000 each.  One problem, besides the gaudiness, is how these wheels will affect the cooling of brakes.  Maybe using these wheels require ceramic brakes.

[via Engadget, AutoBlog]

Technorati tags: ploycarbonate, D'Vinci Forgiato Radurra, wheel

SiteChecker

Paul Westbrook | 03 November, 2006 22:56

SiteChecker is a Firefox extension that notifies you when attempt to navigate to a phishing site.  SiteChecker uses the PhishTank data file.  I know that Firefox 2.0 has phishing detection built in, but the extra check can't hurt.

Update: Here is the new location for the extension.

[via PhishTank Blog]

Technorati tags: extension, Firefox, SiteChecker

Google Apps thoughts

Paul Westbrook | 03 November, 2006 22:38

It has been a few days since I have switched most of my domains, that I actually care about receiving email for, to Google Apps for Your Domain.  I really like this service.  The setup was was very easy.  I actually like the fact that you can set up the user accounts and aliases even before you switch the mx records.  This allows you to test everything before putting in production.

In this post, I mentioned that I was only going to use fetchmail to collect the mail for my account.  I ended up using it for a few more accounts.  One of them is where I have my logs forwarded to for the servers that I maintain.  Since on want one account to check for these logs.  The other is an account that we use KidzMail for our kids to use.  KidzMail only supports unencrypted POP3 and SMTP, which is not supported by Gmail.

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Technorati tags: Gmail, Google Apps

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