BATTLE OF THE ANTS

I installed Firefox 3 on its second day of general availability, and I have been pleased with its overall performance. Hooray jemalloc.

I was totally on board with some of the (touted) new features from the beginning, such as everything in the performance and standards sections of the release notes, the improved session restore support, and the changes within Password Manager, Add-Ons Manager, and Downloads Manager.

I am still not a fan of the Awesome Bar (for me, it is not so awesome), although the Hide Unvisited extension took care of some of my issues with it. But whatever—I can deal.

However, the one issue that I just couldn't deal with any longer was the way in which live bookmarks are loaded. Specifically, live bookmarks load extremely aggressively and hang the UI at startup if you have more than a few bookmarks in the list (all live bookmarks are updated at once). This is a known bug: Bug 329534 - Live bookmarks load way too aggressively (lock up/hang/freeze browser). There are many good comments and suggestions in the bug report, and conversation is ongoing. I am certain that at some point a solution/compromise will be found and this aggressive loading of live bookmarks will cease to be an issue.

In the meantime, I adjusted to the situation by removing all my live bookmarks. This is a pretty big deal for me since all my live bookmarks are in my Sage feed reader extension, which I love very much and have used for well over four years. Four years. That's a significant number if we counted in Internet time.

But I gave up Sage and switched to Google Reader. I've never been against Google Reader or anything...I just don't switch to things unless I need to. I'm a big believer in "if it ain't broke, don't fix it," and Sage wasn't broken (actually, Sage still isn't broken—FF3 is). But now all my personal and edu mail is with GMail, I blog with Blogger, and my students use Google Docs. Good thing I like Google. They're still on the short list corporate entities I'd ever consider working for (you know, if this academic thing doesn't work out and the company I work for now decides to pack it in).

The short list, if anyone is interested, is Google (because yeah, I can just "choose" to work at Google), Pearson (they do pay me already, but not as an employee), and Sun Microsystems (I actually worked there before).

Labels: technical interlude

I do try to follow the rule of never using a long word when a short word will do. Boy howdy is that difficult when, in my field, you must use "hegemony" at least 27 times in your seminar papers before you are awarded your degree.

Ok, I kid. And I have never used "hegemony" in a seminar paper. I am, however, enamored with things like rhizomes, gaps, blanks, and the post-human, so I'm not really sure who "wins" in this situation.

But I digress.

From David at Ironic Sans (awesome blog name), we now have Thsrs: the shorter thesaurus. The intention is to solve this problem: "How can you intelligently get across a complex thought in just 140 characters without needing to use ugly abbreviations (e.g. w/o needing 2 use ugly abbrev's)?" Thsrs returns only those words which are shorter than the word you entered.

This tool would have come in handy when I was pinch-hitting and reading someone else's academic paper...the paper was five minutes longer than it should have been, and the word "remunerate" was used several times. I said to my advisor, when we were figuring out what to do about that, "what the heck is wrong with saying 'pay' one or two of those times?" Thsrs agrees.

Labels: technical interlude

* This is the first week of Summer Session II. I already know that the students in my class are smart, funny, and quite proficient. I hope it will be a painless, yet interesting and in some ways challenging, summer session for them all. A few of the students have already walked in graduation, so this really is their last class, yet they all have good get-the-work-done/learn-something attitudes about being here. At least so far. I've already achieved my goal of making each person laugh at me, and I'm 90% sure of all the names.

* Got the evaluation numbers from last semester's class—two thumbs up. I love me some statistical validation.

* I still haven't taken my new computer out of its box, but I did install Firefox 3 on this machine. I will write a post about it. It's very fast. You know something is speedier than its predecessor when an actual, live human can tell the difference (as opposed to using tools and working in microtime). This Firefox 3 Memory Usage post talks about a lot of the improvements, and I would just like to note that I am personally two degrees of separation from all this awesomeness. You see, my friend/fellow PhD student/soon-to-be office-mate, Donna, is the mother of the fine fellow, Jason Evans, who wrote the jemalloc memory allocator. That's cool.

* Um...how to segue to something not-technical?

* I've cooked a bunch of good food this week. The next One Local Summer post will be full of stuff and pictures. Hooray!

Labels: teacher-like, technical interlude

At first I thought this was going to a continuation of the running joke I have with myself about how it's just so awesome that I have eight books (thirteen total editions) to my name when not a single one is actually applicable to my new career.

But as I was finishing up the 4th edition of Sams Teach Yourself PHP, MySQL, and Apache All-in-One—which I believe is off to the printers now and will be on the shelves of your favorite Barnes & Noble (etc) in a few weeks—I thought "you know, I know this book is used in colleges and universities...that kind of makes it applicable...I wonder how many places use it?" I e-mailed my people and got an answer pretty quickly: over 150 (I have a spreadsheet).

Huh.

So...where does this go on my CV? Currently I have a section at the end called something like "non-academic publications" where I put all this stuff/my old CNet and HotWired stuff/etc...is that a good place? Does it not belong at all? Does it belong more prominently? Would it belong more prominently once I do more "academic" things with my technical knowledge?

These are things I'm wondering today. Any insights welcome.

Labels: grad school, technical interlude

The Adoptic ad widget thing you see over there on the right (unless you're reading through a feedreader) is currently a pretty alpha release of an interesting thing. You might have seen it on Dr. Shellie's blog.

I'm keeping it there as I do alpha/beta testing and stuff. If you would like to do alpha/beta testing too, let me know in comments or via email and I will send an invite. There's a set of self-selected communities, including one just for academic bloggers. Or you can ignore thing until it matures a little bit and there's more to say.

It's not my venture (I'm busy enough, thanks!) but I think it's interesting.

Labels: technical interlude

I just tried out the Facebook chat app. I'd been curious since it appeared yesterday, but I didn't want to foist my testing upon anyone. Luckily I didn't have to, because Rana apparently wanted to test it too...because she messaged me just a few minutes ago.

What I wanted to test was whether or not the in-browser/layered version of the app would still consider you active and online if the tab with Facebook wasn't the active tab. If my browser is up (meaning, if I am up...) I always have multiple tabs open and switch around a lot. I could imagine that would be annoying if Facebook considered the inactive tab as "offline."

Well, it doesn't. If you have a tab up with Facebook loaded, and you're working in another tab, and you get a message, the title of the tab changes (dare I say it blinks? because that is what it does...) and says "new message from [person]!"

It's very exciting.

Notes:
* I don't use the pop-out chat because I need another window open like I need a hole in the head.
* I don't know what happens if you have multiple chat sessions open in an inactive tab. Probably the title of the tab keeps blinking as appropriate.
* I'd like to have an optional sound notification.
* If the chat API is open too, I predict it will take approximately 3-5 days for chat skins and themes to become available for download...with embedded ads. I'm ok with that. Hell, I should do one up. You know, in my copious free time. Whatev. I just want a little ping sound when I have a new message.

If anyone wants to chat, feel free anytime my wee dot is green.

updated 4/24/08: according to the FB FAQs, the API isn't open (yet? ever?), so no skins in the future. Also, Amit Agarwal at Digital Inspiration (who I used to link to a ton at the old blog, and still read daily) has a post about putting the chat client in the sidebar of your browser. I won't do it because I already have Sage in my sidebar and I don't need something else. But it might be useful to some.

Labels: technical interlude

Not me—I think I'm ok. But I was just looking at my blogroll and realizing that it does not really reflect the things in my feedreader.

I hereby vow to update it soon. Like maybe next week. Or tomorrow. I don't really know!

I do know that I am entirely finished with two seminars (papers completed, turned in, etc), so only two more projects to finish up this/next week.

Right now, though, I have to grade the final papers in my class. I'll also do final grades because I'm one of those keep-a-spreadsheet-throughout-the-semester people. I also have to remember to get donuts for class tomorrow.

What else? Oh! If you're not on the blogroll and think you should be, let me know! Chances are good you're already in my feedreader, but that's not public. I'm bad at sharing the love right now.

Labels: misc life, technical interlude

Today is the TENTH anniversary of the Mozilla Project.

At this point in 1998 I was 3+ years into my career and already sick and tired of working in all things internet.

Um. I move kinda slow, since I'm still doing stuff.

For a somewhat uncomfortable (in that it brings up all sorts of stressful memories) look back to 1998, see Jamie Zawinski's Happy Run Some Old Web Browsers Day! post.

Wow. <blink>I'm old.</blink>

Labels: technical interlude

I haven't had much time (actually, none at all) to work with my Asus Eee PC 4G since it arrived. In that time, however, two profs and my best pal all bought one (the latter for her ma-in-law, but she was going to keep it for herself if it "didn't work out"...) and have used theirs more than I have mine.

A lot of the hacking I want to do involves updating the system, and that requires an internet connection...and that's one of the issues: getting this thing working with the WSU VPN so I can use that connection. Can't use the connection at home because my cable provider works off MAC addresses and I just didn't want to call them and deal with that. So, I had to wait until I had a moment to sneak off to an open WiFi place—in this instance, the coffeeshop downtown. The wireless works like a charm and I've already begun to update packages and configure things the way I like them (hello, KDE desktop!)

Of course, the ultimate reason for having this wee computer is the enhanced productivity. Isn't it ironic, then, that I'm blogging from a coffeeshop? I should be taking notes while sitting in the MASC, or giving a presentation in class. All in due time...

Labels: technical interlude

The title of this post is Rule of Cuteness #7 at Cute Overload.

In THIS instance, the two cute things are not kittens, puppies, or koalas. But I think the rule still holds, especially if you're a geek like me (or my TESOL prof, who might tackle me and take the little one from me when I see her in the hall today).

Behold, my brand new Asus Eee PC 4G sitting on the keyboard of my Gateway NX860S notebook.

I need to spend a little time hacking the Eee PC—not because it's crappy (it's not. In fact, the out-of-the-box configuration is really good) but because I'm a little, um, "specific" in how I like things set up.

For a little more perspective, the little guy is approximately 2 Gateway NX860S AC adapters by 1.5 Gateway NX860S AC adapters in size. That's wee.

[And yes, you CAN talk about the juxtaposition of two—count 'em, two—portable computers with an image of Yosemite in the background. But I prefer not to, at the moment.]

Labels: misc life, technical interlude

Yesterday I came home to a box of books on my doorstep. Not unusual, because Amazon.com loves me, but this package was from my publisher. They do a good job of filling my closet with books I can't read but I keep because they make me look cool. Or geeky. Can't decide which.

You see, these books are in Lithuanian.

I thought it was Polish when I looked at it the first time (there goes my gig with the UN) but it was slightly, um, not-Polish-looking-enough that I looked in the front matter and found the publisher's URL: a dot-lt, which is Lithuania. So there you go: a new language to add to the list.

So far, I've had books published in the following languages (not all books in all languages): Arabic, Chinese (Traditional), Danish, Finnish, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Korean, Lithuanian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Spanish, and Turkish.

I've been doing this (writing books thing) for eight years now and still this whole translation thing makes me laugh. I mean really, I still can't get over that people read this stuff in English, let alone Lithuanian. Cracks me up.

Labels: misc life, technical interlude

Labels: misc life, technical interlude

Labels: technical interlude

When a link to BusinessWeek's "Fogeys Flock to Facebook" article popped up in my GMail Web Clips, I immediately thought, "Great! Big-time press picked up on a conversation started last week by some really smart bloggers I like."

To wit (small link roundup copied shamelessly from Liz Ditz):
* Freydblog: elder hate groups on facebook
* Ronni Bennett: Facebook=Elder Hatebook and Facebook/Hatebook Responses
* Karoli: Facebook's Ugly Underbelly
* Shelley Powers: The Ugly Face of Facebook

There are plenty of good comments and links to other blog posts within the links listed above. I'll summarize the issue, but urge you to take a gander for yourself (or see the post by Grace Davis) if you're at all interested in this: there are a considerable number of Facebook groups with names like "Asking old people for a quarter then throwing it in there [sic] face..hahaha!" and "I Hate Old People" and "I don't wanna be Facebook friends with senior citizens!" and so on and so forth. In some instances and to some of these Facebookians, "senior citizens" seems to mean "people over 30," which of course hits a little too close to home. But that's not the point. The main point was about turning hate and rage toward the older set, wondering where it comes from, and more importantly wondering why it even exists given Facebook's anti-hate terms of service.

However, the [big] question discussed above is not at all the subject of the BusinessWeek article. Instead, we have this:

Lately, an influx of older users—professionals their 30s and 40s, many in high-tech—is changing the face of Facebook. Among Silicon Valley executives, journalists, and publicists, Facebook has become the place to see and be seen. And it's not just tech. Consulting company Ernst & Young's Facebook network boasts 16,000 members, Citigroup's (C) claims nearly 8,500.

Factor in plans by Microsoft (MSFT), Facebook's biggest business partner, to help turn the site into a tool for making professional connections, and the Palo Alto (Calif.) Internet company could be on the cusp of expanding its already impressive advertising roster, increasing its value as a buyout target or initial public offering candidate, and challenging professional-networking site LinkedIn as the go-to nexus for recruiters and investors.

The article goes on to provide plenty of good numbers regarding the profiles of new users, and basically asks what Facebook brings to the table for "the long-in-the-tooth crowd."

As a Facebook user [You can friend me if you want using my first name underscore my last name at wsu.edu], and as someone "long-in-the-tooth" relative to my students, I can say that Facebook already brings plenty to the table for me. I use it as an address book, a may to make connections, and a way to keep up with people I care about. I don't have eighty-seven million friends—that would defeat the purpose. Facebook isn't MySpace. [Insert entirely different ongoing discussion and just go over to danah boyd's blog and read her works-in-progress or browse her bibliographies.]

Back to the article. Numbers blah blah, advertisers blah blah, third-party app development blah blah, market value billions blah blah.

And one bland sentence about what I hoped the article was about:

Some college-age kids see the influx of users old enough to be their parents as an affront.

The information contained within the BusinessWeek article shows there's something to the connection between Facebook, "long-in-the-tooth" users, revenue, and ultimate market value. Given that, it would behoove Facebook to visit the question posed by the esteemed bloggers linked to at the beginning of this post: what's up with the hate? Successful online communities have community managers; perhaps Facebook should find a few among the 33 million people hanging out poking each other online.

Labels: technical interlude

I am lucky to live in a place with a relatively high Walk Score. Chuck and Jason have both recently discussed Walk Score, with their homes having scores of 25 and 28, respectively (not walkable). Chuck thinks his score is too high and Jason thinks his is too low. My place has a Walk Score of 52 (some walkable locations) and I think it's slightly low. Both Chuck and Jason pointed out the issues with how Walk Score works (go read their posts), and the Walk Score folks themselves have both how it works and how it doesn't work pages on their site which echo some of the same issues Chuck and Jason mention.

I think Walk Score is an interesting tool and could be enhanced by turning it into a community site in which things like Chuck's comment that "If I wanted to go to a business across the street, I'd feel like I was taking my life in my hands," could be addressed. That's the sort of information not reflected in a simple "there is a business across the street +1" data point. There is a big data problem, recognized by the creators (and anyone who uses it), that their results are only as good as the data they have—in this case, Google Maps data...and that data typically excludes a lot of things on campuses, like libraries, coffeeshops, theatres, etc. That would be some of the first stuff I'd tackle if opened up for community involvement. Next would be weeding out the businesses that aren't there anymore, then adding in the ones that are. In fact, I'd be very surprised if the limited release of this tool is not simply the first step toward a community-enhanced site that would pair very well with something like Zillow or Yelp (very different audiences, but both could use the score for appropriate purposes).

But it is true: in Pullman, I walk a lot because I can. The English Dept and the Library are half a mile away, Starbucks is something like 0.3 mile away and the grocery store is just a little ways past that. My gym is 0.8 mile away. There are plenty of restaurants within, say, a 0.75 mile radius of my house: two pizza places, a McDonald's, a Jack in the Box, two or three Chinese places and a Mexican restaurant. "Downtown" is about a mile and half away—I could certainly walk there if I were so moved, and who's to say I won't be? I have to work on switching my brain to think like a person with the free time to walk if I want; I have to learn that it's ok to take the extra 15 minutes on both ends of my alloted workout time so I can walk to and from the place instead of driving.

Anyway, Walk Score—interesting concept, room for expansion, many ways to leverage the content. Good luck with that!

Labels: misc life, technical interlude

I have avoided discussing technical things (for the most part) since I switched from the old blog to this lovely life/academic blog, but I would like to take a moment to note that....

Google has acquired FeedBurner

for a gajillion dollars. Ok, something like $100 million, not a gajillion, but still.

I have loved loved loved Feedburner since the moment they became a company. I have never had anything except stellar communications with them, and they all just seem like top-notch people. I couldn't be happier for them to now have millions of dollars and the power of the Google farm behind them.

Yay!

Labels: technical interlude