Life has been very busy with starting a new job back in August. I’m doing a lot of distributed computing software development in Java which is really interesting but also really time consuming. Back in December I received my Cloudera Certified Hadoop Developer certification and am currently studying to take the Sun Certified Java Programmer certification exam.

Despite being super busy, I’ve been trying to stay on top of the tech scene by downloading video podcasts and watching them on my Apple TV. The technology works but finding the time sometimes doesn’t.

To subscribe to all of these services individually would be far more than the cost of taking a single class.  It’s a great benefit even though I don’t really have the time or inclination to do much independent research.  Maybe I’ll start?

The MarsEdit screen is automatically divided into a top and bottom section to compose items before and after the “cut”.  It reminds me of years ago when I used the Clarify CRM software which had a top/bottom split window for public and internal case comments.  It’s a good design.

I haven’t figured out a way to embed YouTube videos using the rich text editor but I can switch to the HTML edit view to post an embed tag.  I’d like a little more native support for such a popular video sharing support, but I can live with it.

MarsEdit does have good support for posting draft versions, categories, and tags.  I think it will work well for me as an offline composer.

Most of my remote access to systems is done through ssh and if I need to run a graphical application I typically tunnel X over ssh.  Recently, however, I needed a persistent graphical desktop that I could disconnect from and leave running so I fired up VNC.  I wasn’t sure what a good VNC client for OS X would be, but after some Googling I found Chicken of the VNC.  The reviews I’ve found are mixed, but I like it and it suits my needs.  If you’re a Mac user needing a VNC client I doubt you’ll find one with a cooler name.

On the subject of cool Mac OS X applications, I’d also like to mention Sequel Pro.  It’s a very useful MySQL graphical client for OS X.  If you do any database development or administration with MySQL I recommend it.  It would be nice if it would support Postgres as well.  Apparently it’s on their roadmap.

Speaking of PostgreSQL, I came across the PostGIS project the other day during my web surfing.  MySQL apparently also has spatial extensions.  How the two systems compare I have no idea as this is far from my area of expertise.  I wasn’t aware that the free database systems had spatial extensions.  It makes sense that they would, I just never knew that because I don’t do that kind of work.  Good to know in case I do need a free spatial database system though.

On another note, I was logging into the Google analytics account for one of the nonprofit sites I manage the other day and it occurs to me that Google still doesn’t recognize Google Apps for Domains accounts as Google accounts for the purposes of using their applications.  I have Google Apps for Domains for this domain but I have to login with my GMail account to access Google Analytics, Google Wave, etc.  It’s not the end of the world but I’d like to just be able to login with my secretelite.com account.  If I could have Google Wave for secretelite.com I might actually use it.  Oh well.  Maybe some day..

I saw a story on Slashdot the other day stating that the Khan Academy delivers 100,000 lectures a day.  I’ve been a big fan of the Khan Academy for a long time so I was happy to see the coverage.  If you’re not familiar, Khan Academy is a series of lectures mainly on the subject of math (ranging from basic arithmetic through differential equations) but also including some content on science and economics and finance.  If any of those subjects are of interest to you, I highly suggest checking out the excellent free lectures.

WordPress 3.0 has been released. At some point in the near future I am going to upgrade this site and overhaul the theme. I’m not as thrilled with this layout as I’d like to be. Most likely because I stopped working on it in the middle of the project. Story of my life.

I upgraded my MacBook to OS X 10.6.4 last week. Unfortunately that broke my Time Machine backups. I’ve been using my Ubuntu server as a Time Machine backup system but with 10.6.4 it started verifying the backup and suggested I clear out the old backup and start from scratch. I wasn’t so worried about my backup history so I decided to do that but then I couldn’t get it to back up again. After much frustration and failed attempts at upgrading my Ubuntu server to get a newer version of netatalk I realized that the actual problem was that I needed to create the com.apple.TimeMachine.MachineID.plist file under the sparse bundle and add the following XML:

<?xml version=“1.0” encoding=“UTF-8”?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC “-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN” “http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd”>
<plist version=“1.0”>
  <dict>
    <key>com.apple.backupd.HostUUID</key>
    <string>YOURUUIDHERE</string>
  </dict>
</plist>

I try to make notes of this sort of thing in my wiki knowledge base, but in this case I left that step out. That was a time costly mistake.

I’m going to upgrade to an iPhone 4 in the near future. I’m still on the original 3G which is getting a little long in the tooth and the volume button just fell off which cemented my decision to upgrade. I considered preordering but I think I’ll wait until they are more general availability in case any problems start to be reported. Apparently there are issues with holding the antenna causing signal problems but that’s not a showstopper for me since I will no doubt get a case for it.

My friend Ken Foreman posted some example pictures on Facebook of panoramic pictures taken with the iPhone app Autostitch. I never use my iPhone camera but with the iPhone 4’s higher quality camera I expect I will start using it more and will definitely have to give Autostitch a try.

I mentioned the other day that I downloaded MacJournal to try as an offline composer. I’m writing this update with MacJournal and while I think it’s going to work well as private journaling software it’s not a great blog writer. It seems to be missing features such as posting items as drafts, etc. So I’m going to look for different OS X blog composition software.

And for today’s media item, my friend told me about this video on YouTube of a Lego printer someone made. It’s pretty impressive!

I’m a fan of books.  I read a fair amount and I like having a bookshelf of paper volumes.  I’m not sure that I would use an eInk reader to take the place of my paper novels.  The value for me in an eInk reader is in periodicals and PDFs of technical manuals.

I have a paper subscription to The Economist but there is no value to me in having piles of previous weeks issues laying around my house.  I wouldn’t mind switching that to an eInk version.  And as I wrote back in January 2006 I’d love to be able to get trade press such as Daily Variety delivered electronically.

I also download a lot of PDF manuals for various technical products.  I don’t like to print them out as it’s a waste of paper.  On the other hand, I am not thrilled with reading lengthy documents on an LCD or CRT screen.  The main reason I haven’t bought an e-reader so far is that they have not had good native support for PDF.  The Kindle DX does support PDF without having to convert the file which is a must-have feature for me.

I haven’t preordered a Kindle DX but if the user experience reviews are positive once it’s released I think I may purchase one.  The selection of periodicals available in the Kindle store is limited but I hope it will expand over time.  It really seems like an excellent platform for regional trade papers.  If I could get Variety and the Hollywood Reporter on the Kindle I’d consider renewing my subscriptions to those papers.  Digital delivery is the future of news.  At least for me.

I am aware of the inverted pyramid structure for writing newspaper articles. I understand search engine optimization. I realize that getting to the heart of the matter quickly is good for eyeball retention and PageRank. But I still bury the lead on most of these posts.

This web site is my personal voice. And I don’t speak in the edited prose of a newspaper column.  I tend to speak in anecdotes and asides.  When I’m relating a fact I tend to turn it into an opportunity to tell a story.  To add context and opinion.  That’s just my personal style.

It doesn’t apply in all arenas of life.  When I write work emails or communicate verbally with colleagues on business matters I tend to be very concise and to the point.  But I don’t consider this web site to be a professional endeavor.  It reflects the style of my personal life, not my office communications.

I’ve thought about trying to write more in a more professional tone that would help out my search engine results and perhaps attract more readers.  But in the end, it’s not faithful to the spirit of what I’m trying to accomplish.  So I’m comfortable with the trade-off.

Unfortunately, I had to pull the plug last week.  There was apparently a problem with the file server that my account was hosted on, so they moved my shell account to another system.  Not sure that I really follow that logic, but whatever works for them.  Unfortunately, they never actually copied any of my content.

I opened 2 or 3 support requests last week and none were answered.  I followed the status updates on dreamhoststatus.com but they kept saying all problems were resolved.  Obviously mine was not.  So I finally pulled the pin and moved everything over to GoDaddy.  Amusingly, after I did that I sent one more email asking if Dreamhost planned to ever address my support requests.  I received a reply back stating that everything looked good from their end.  Of course, what they were seeing was my domains hosted somewhere else.  I again checked my shell account and…nothing there.

I’m really frustrated because some of the features I have been using on Dreamhost are just not available elsewhere.  Subversion support.  Using the auth_mysql Apache module.  And others.  Yet, what value are all those features if I can’t have the site up?

I don’t mind a little down time with budget hosting, but I don’t like being told that everything is up and operational and then having my support requests actively ignored.  So I’ve had to move.

I’m not sure what I’m going to do about the missing functionality.  It may be that the GoDaddy move is an interm step before going to a dedicated server.  But I really don’t want to spend the money on that right now.  So I’ll stay in a holding pattern and see how GoDaddy works for me.