Download This! - Old News

Sometimes new is not necessarily good. I distinctly remember a case where a customer, presented with a newer version of our software, demanded a downgrade - he liked the look & feel and stability of the older version.

This happens with downloaded software more and more often: add new features, take away the stability - that's the common trade off. But if you need an older version of a software, you may find that most download sites and the vendor's site only carry the latest version.

Enter VersionTracker, a site dedicated to preserving old software versions. You can download almost every available version of many shareware/freeware applications, some going all the way back to the year 2000.

The site covers Windows, Mac and Palm software. It also provides a service to get alerts when new versions of your favorite apps are available.

Update: my favorite download site FileHippo also provides up to 10 versions back on any app on the site. The selection, though, is quite limited, compared to VersionTracker's collection.

Quake

I have to share with you an experience I just went through.

About an hour ago, while I was playing "Call of Duty 3" on my Xbox 360. Suddenly, as I was covering my teammates and taking severe enemy fire, I felt a strong shaking. "Damn", I said, "this force feedback controller has got a pretty strong kick". And then I've noticed that it's not just my hands that are shaking, it was the entire house.

I've been living in California for a little over a year now, but this was my first major earthquake - and it was scary as hell. The adrenaline still floats in my system. It lasted over 2 minutes and almost every thing that wasn't nailed down shook. Even when I stepped out, I was still wobbly.

I later verified that not only was this a strong quake (5.6 on the Richter scale), but it's epicenter was 5 miles (8Km) from me, in San Jose. Here's a link to "my quake" which the government named "event nc40204628" and categorized as a "moderate earthquake". I find the mere fact that there is a site that can show you those "events" in near-realtime quite frightening.

And I was told to expect aftershocks. Hope I can sleep tonight...

Update: seems like I'm not the only one who has experienced this earthquake.

Very Funny, Apple - Not!

I guess someone at Apple must have thought he was very funny.

If you're using the new Leopard system (reviewed here), and connect your Mac to a network with Windows PCs on it, the icon that will represent the PCs is a monitor with a BSOD ("Blue Screen of Death") on it (see the image on the left, named public.generic-pc.icns).

Of course, all Apple users believe their operating system is better than the competition. But this, too me (a Mac user and a Windows developer) looks extremely smug and childish.

And of course, there remains the point that this would have been much funnier, had Mac OS users haven't experienced BSODs of their own when first installing Leopard.

If you have Leopard installed, and like me, you think this icon is immature, follow the steps outlined here to change the icon.

Yo World!

Just a fun site I ran across. This site has a collection of 350 "Hello World" programs, in almost every programming language available. It also has translations of the phrase into 58 human languages.

For people who haven't programmed before, a program printing out the phrase "Hello World" is traditionally the first program you learn to write, when taught a new language. This tradition started with the book "The C Programming Language" by Kernighan & Ritchie, the first, and definitive book on that language (I still have a copy even though I've long since advanced to C++ and later C#).

What I find interesting is how long can a program be, that prints out a phrase. You could understand the assemblers taking that long, being low-level languages, but look at COBOL and JCL, for wasted declaration steps. I also found the PDF representation interesting (first look for me into this vector-oriented language) and the Logo graphical depiction was fun to remember.

Ah, the good old programming days...

The Big Drive in the Sky

A couple of days ago I've described a way to utilize your GMail space as storage. Today, I found myself in need of sharing a large (over 10Mb) file with a colleague. Rather than utilize FTP, I decided to try SkyDrive, Microsoft online storage.

A very easy way to manage online files, SkyDrive allows you to create folders, upload files and share them with specific people or with the rest of the world. Visitors can either change the file or access it as readers only.

To use SkyDrive you need a Live ID (the same one used for Hotmail, and the other Live services). This will buy you 1GB of online storage (here's hoping that Microsoft will increase it in the future, a-la Google's 4.5GB GMail accounts).

One piece of advice: the automatic email sent to a person, when you share a file with him, tends to be flagged as spam by mail clients. Make sure you email the link to your friends from an email address they trust.

Prism: the Future of Offline Web Apps?

The Mozila Foundation, makers of Firefox, announced Prism, an application that allows users to run web applications as standalone apps. Essentially, you get an icon on your desktop (or start menu) that will run a web app (GMail, Facebook etc.) inside a window, without the need to open a browser. Cookies and setting will be saved for each app separately.

Currently, it works only on Windows, but other operating systems are coming soon. It's based on Firefox and XUL (the XML UI Language at the base of FF and the other Mozilla apps). It's open source, so you can download it and improve it (actually, that's what they like you to do).

It took me 2 minutes to realize why this sounded so familiar. If you've been using Internet Explorer for at last 8 years, you must have heard of HTA (HTML Application), a file format that allows you to run an HTML app in a non IE window, including Javascripts and an icon, giving it the appearance of a standalone application.

So 8 years later, Mozilla re-invented the HTA. The good thing about it is Mozilla claims Prism just a basis for a future offline type of application, intending to add 3D graphics capabilities to the client-side and better web service access - making it a real off/on line app.

My suggestion: don't invent the wheel. Why not use an existing framework? How about Google Gears? Gears allows you to save online data locally, in a searchable database. Essentially, allowing you to continue using the application, even if your computer is disconnected from the internet.

Maybe that's the way to go. Or maybe, in the future, wireless connection will be as ubiquitous as air, and this entire discussion will be rendered moot. Until then, I think this type of development would take hold, especially with the prevalence of mobile devices.

For further reading on this type of applications, read the Microsoft Smart Client FAQ.

In Search of an Accurate Schedule

A while back, I attempted to explain Evidence Based Scheduling, the new approach taken by Joel Spolsky's FogBugz software (see FogBugz Will Estimate Your Estimation Abilities).

If you are interested in learning more, here's a link to a detailed post by Joel, explaining his approach.


As for me, I'll stick to Wexelblat's Scheduling Algorithm:

Choose two:

• Good
  
• Fast
  
• Cheap

[meant to be used when asked by a manager when will the software be ready].

Online Traveler Tools

This is a pretty straight-forward post. No hidden agenda or ideologies. In this column I'll list the web sites that make my traveling life easier.

Information, tips, guides and predictions - all are out there on many sites, but these few - some have been around for years - serve me the best:

1. Weather - Accuweather provides worldwide weather predictions, for up to 10 days ahead, in Celsius and Fahrenheit. Add to that the fact that it can be neatly integrated into Firefox using an add-on called ForecastFox.
   
   
2. Currency - XE.com will provide currency conversion, between any two currencies, with up-to-date rates. As an addition, you can use their conversion service to your site or app (as a web service).
   
   
3. Time - until recently, I've used The World Clock, now I've switched to Time Zone Check (I just like the Flash interface). However, if you need to access from a mobile device, definitely go with the plainer site.
   
   
4. Electricity - this site will tell you what current is used anywhere around the world and what shape of socket to expect. Used it first on my trip to Australia and it served me well since.
   
   
5. Plane Seats - ever wondered which seat you should try to grab on your next flight? Look at SeatGuru to find the seat configuration, on any plane, of every airline. Also, you'd find great tips and recommendations, like which seats are too close to the restroom, which have the video equipment stowed under them, and which can't recline. (Here's one tip from me: if you ever fly in those tiny regional jets, like the Embraer, skip the window rows A and C. The plane is so narrow that the curvature will make seating uncomfortable. Try for the B aisle row. And on international Continental flights, go for rows lower than 23, if you'd like a power socket for your laptop).
   
   
6. Maps - while Google Maps and Live Maps are great in US and Canada and both have mobile versions, 3D versions and satellite imaging (useful if you intend to bomb your destination). But they are a bit thin on Europe and Asia.
   Streetmap is great for the UK, especially within London. Map24 - great for Europe and Asia, with a nice Java animation that will show you your route and expected turns (notice that by default it will show you a map of the country you are browsing from).
   
   
7. Travel Guides - for travel guides for my destinations (if I have some free time, otherwise I just whisk in and out, never bothering to smell the roses) I use Fodor's Travel Guides, or the old favorite Lonely Planet.
   
   
8. Trains - not so common in the US, trains are considered a major form of transportation in Europe. In the past I've used this site for trains in the UK, this site for trains in Germany and this site for trains in Austria. Since many European countries allow train travel to one another, the sites usually cover travel between major capital (i.e., I've used the Austrian site to book a travel from Vienna to Prague to Budapest and back to Vienna).
   
   
9. Itineraries - this site was pointed out to me by a couple of my colleagues (hey Ryan!). World Mate Live works in a unique way: you add a plugin to your Outlook mail client and download an application to your Blackberry. By selecting certain email in your mailbox (those you receive from your travel agent, containing your air, hotel and car bookings. It will even parse PDF files - like the ones you may receive from American Express travel), the site collects all the information and builds and maintains an itinerary for the trip. The mobile app means insures that this info (including dates, addresses and phones) is always available. The client also shows time and date for multiple locations, weather and limited currency conversion. This service is free. For a $100 a year, you'll get real live alerts about delayed or canceled flights, or severe weather conditions at your destination.
   I've just started using the service and will give it a try.
   
   
10. Airlines and cars - I have plenty of bookmarks to all the airlines I use - and probably so do you, so I won't bother listing them here. What I did want to mention are Orbitz and Expedia, 2 sites I use to find all the available flight alternatives between me and my destination, so I'll know which flights to book. I do the same for cars.
    
    
11. Hotels - I usually book directly with the hotel sites and I try to stick to chains that allow me to collect points (no need to pay for any vacation hotel). But to compare prices or find availability, I use Hotels.com and Travelocity.
    

I hope you'll find these sites helpful. Drop me a comment or email with any suggestions for sites you use. I'll either add them to this post or to a future list.

Life and Death at the End of the Toungue

I've promised to never review a book unless I've finished it and this is the reason this post is slightly delayed (when you're jet lagged, it's hard to read at night).

The book I'd like to recommend today is Imperium by Robert Harris (link and picture on the left).

I've loved Harris' work on Fatherland (a what-if scenario of the results of World War II) and Enigma (about the British efforts to break the German's code machine). Archangel has also been good (although this is probably the only time I can say the TV series was better than a book - watch Daniel Craig, in his pre-Bond days, solve one of Russia's greatest mysteries).

The book follows the life of the greatest Roman orator Cicero, from a stuttering boy to the height of his political and advocacy career. It is written from the point of view of his slave Tiro, himself a learned man and writer and inventor of shorthand (used by stenographers in court until today).

We learn a lot about speech delivery (the way Cicero is taught to memorize his long speeches - some took days to deliver, and he never used notes - is amazing), politics, alliances, and spirit.

Having not come from an aristocratic family, Cicero had to prove himself to his peers and to the people on a daily basis. At a time when if you were too smart and a better speaker than your enemies, they would simply murder you, he took great risks and faced them down smartly. Some of his observations are still true today (e.g. "beware a politician who says he entered public service not for himself, but for the greater good - he's the vainest of them all" and my favorite: "if it's loyalty you want - get a dog").

Most of Cicero's speeches and letters were recorded for posterity and are available. But if you have no time for dry rhetorics and historical facts, just read this book. Adding a personal side to this complex, controversial, ambitious and smart person and coloring the entire period when people could literally live or die but what they've said (hence the title of the post).

PS: my fascination with the Roman empire times started by reading Robert Graves' "I Claudius", the greatest Roman novel in my humble opinion. And if you want to get to the source of these 2 great novels, look no further than Suetonius' "Twelve Caesars", arguably the best piece of gossip ever written, by a person who survived some the 12 first Caesars of Rome (showing you how resourceful he was and also how short lived were they).

Disposable Email

A while ago, I was discussing one way to avoid the need to register for every site.
Here's another, geared towards those pesky sites that require an email to register or get a download link.

Guerrilla Mail will give you a temporary email address, good for 15 minutes (can be extended further, if needed). Just specify that on the registration form, log into the mailbox from the site and collect the information you need.

Great idea. Simple and clean interface. Now can someone please give an disposable mailbox I can SEND email from? :)

OS War - Fair and Balanced

The post's title may be familiar to any Fox News watcher (although usually they are neither).
Last week, I've blogged about 2 Vista competitors (Leopard and Gutsy Gibbon). My intentions were not to bash Microsoft (or Vista), just to demonstrate that there are other alternatives out there and that, perhaps, Microsoft lost this round in the OS war (and I mean quality-wise, not sales-wise).

Here are some news items that will show that nothing is perfect in the other camp as well:

1. Many people who tried upgrading their Mac OS X to Leopard this weekend, got a... blue screen of death??? Wait a second, isn't the BSOD trademarked by Microsoft?
   It appears there is a problem with some upgrades. Apple Support people are flooded with calls. They have a workaround, that would require you to open a terminal window (for the Windows-only crowd: that's like a command window) and delete some files. Still, not the best way to launch anew OS. Read about it here, here and on Apple Support forums here.
   
   
2. Not everyone seems to be blown away by Leopard's new interface. This guy thinks it's actually a step back.
   
   
3. An IPv6 issue with release 7.10 of Ubuntu forces some users to downgrade to 7.04. I'm sure it's a fixable issue, but the title attracted my attention ("not so gutsy").

Being a software developer, I know that not everything is perfect the first time around (although a major issue in a major release can usually be tracked back to poor QA).
Apple and Ubuntu will surely fix those issues soon. I'm still waiting for SP1 for Vista to see if Microsoft can fix their annoyances.

A Cruel Trick

I know there is at least one active trickster in my reading audience, but I sure hope he won't take this post as a recommendation :)

On a recent TWIT episode, John C. Dvorak suggested a very cruel trick you can pull on a friend about to board a plane:

1. take a thin sheet of lead.
2. cut a piece shaped (roughly) like a gun.
3. slide it between the pages of your friend's book.
4. try to be behind him in the security line when the TSA agent uses the X-Ray machine :)

Disclaimer: The Traveling Tech Guy does not condone this, or any other tricks. Especially not ones involving TSA agents.

What's the Time?

Just "stumbled upon" around, and reached this amazing site: Time Zone Check.

A beautiful flash interface allows you to find the time anywhere around the world, either graphically, or by searching for a city name (for the geographically-challenged :)).

The site that served me well so far (especially on transatlantic conference calls, when you don't know whether it's "good morning", "good evening", or "sorry that I woke you up" on the other side) is The World Clock, showing date and time at major cities.

Download This! - GMail Drive

For newcomers to the blog: first, welcome and I hope you'll stick around. This particular post seems to have generated a lot of traffic, mostly through StumbleUpon. It is one in a series of articles, titled "Download This!", covering free utilities worth downloading. Find the rest in the series here, or by clicking the "Downloads" tab at the top.
Also try some book recommendations, travel tips and tech tips.

Enjoy your stay and come back soon!

I've written several posts about Google services and APIs (here's one about GData). Here's a tool that shows usefulness and initiative.

Over time, my GMail account grew in capacity, from 1GB to 1.5, 2 and today it stands proudly at 4.2GB. Frankly, I don't have that much email. But isn't this just underutilized online storage, waiting to be harnessed?

That's exactly what this tool's developer thought. Utilizing Google's interface, he'll allow you to treat your entire GMail account as a big online depot.

After installation, the software manifests itself as just another drive in the My Computer screen. Right click it and enter the GMail account's username and password and you're all set. Now you can drag-n-drop files onto the icon or treat it like another disk on your machine.
Every time you copy a file, it translates into an email with an attachment. But you don't need to care - all you see are files, as if they are in Explorer.

Install it on more than one computer - and it's a great way to have access to files you need on the fly. Create a shared account with your friends - and you'd be able to share those files. And best of all - you can always create another GMail account == limitless disks :).

Since attachments are limited by Google (specifically to block storage abuse) to 10MB, this will be the maximum file size you'd be able to upload. I just use an archive software (like WinRar) to break the file into 10MB pieces.

Uninstallation (if needed) is painless. Like I've said useful, free and shows great use of an API for other purposes than those it was designed for.

Download GMAil Drive here.

Update
I've had several people comment that an alternative called GSpace performs the same function. GSpace is a Firefox extension and behaves like a file transfer program inside your browser. It allows multiple GMail account management. For my money, I'll stick to GMail Drive - smaller and better integrated with the OS. Also does not require me to open the browser to use.

Important Update! (11/9/07)
Google just changed something in the GMail log-in sequence, as preparation for launching GMail 2.0. Please download the latest version of GMail Drive (1.12 - not the beta) that deals with the change.

Another Update (11/18/07)
My GMail box just crossed the 5GB threshold! Go Google Go!

Scary Update (12/7/07 7:30am)
Someone in Google UK just spent 13 minutes reading this post. Why? I do not know. Hopefully to enjoy the great review (and NOT to block this API). Click here to see the DNS entry I received.

Guy's 4-S Rule

On Sunday, I told the story of how I was charged $175 to be allowed off a flight from Chicago to Madison. Yesterday, I witnessed the other end of the farce.

I've just returned my rental car at the Madison airport and prepared to board my United flight to Chicago, and from there start my trip back west. 'Ah-ah' said the counter dude, 'there's no Guy registered on this flight'.

WTF?!? Well after some inquiries, he called his supervisor and she found the root cause: the brainiac who canceled my flight to Madison must have decided that I don't need a flight back, and canceled that one as well.

I tried explaining my predicament. I produced the $175 receipt to prove that I was already fined enough, I tried everything - no joy. I was about to lose my patience (not a good thing to happen in a US airport nowadays). Finally I've uttered a sentence that I'd like carved on my headstone:
'Someone Screwed Something Somewhere', I said, 'Fix it'.

5 minutes later I had a boarding pass to Chicago. 'Of course', said the supervisor, 'I don't have to do this - it's a favor'.

There's nothing I hate more than receiving the service I deserve and having been told it's a favor, or that I didn't deserve it in the first place. It happens all the time (especially with government services, that love treating your money as if it's already theirs). It's about time someone answered one of those people (not me - I needed to get to Chicago :)).

So, anyway, since I dealt with named adages (see "Obey Murphy - It's the Law!" and "Watch Out For the Razor!"), I decided to name this "Guy's 4-S Rule":

The adage: Someone Screwed Something Somewhere.
The person: Traveling Tech Guy.
Background: being screwed up by United Airlines and about to miss his connection to Chicago and a good night sleep at his own bed, a desperate guy utters a desperate cry to the universe to correct the predicament.
General interpretation: I have no idea how I got into this situation. Someone else is to blame. Fix it dammit, or feel my wrath!
Reality: add your own story here (or post a comment).
Recommended reading: Chaos: Making a New Science by James Gleick.

Well, got home at midnight. Will recover over the weekend and will attempt to review some books and a game...

The Monkey Ate My Vista

Yes, I know I've posted before that I kinda like Vista (see "Now Written on Windows Vista"), but after a long period of giving it a chance, I can see why people (and tech columnists) are complaining.

It's slow, incompatible with some of my devices (no video conferencing for me - it hates both my Creative and my generic cameras - and no driver update in sight), but mostly, it drinks memory like a Hummer drinks gas.

So, since I started this day by comparing Leopard (Apple's new OS for the Mac) to Vista (see "The Leopard Ate My Vista"), let's finish it by comparing Vista to another animal: the latest release of Ubuntu 7.10 - codename "Gutsy Gibbon" (hence the gibbon picture).

Ubuntu (African word meaning "humanity to others") currently runs on one of my VMs and I'm looking for an old (cheap) computer to install it on permanently (hardware requirements are quite low).

What can I say? Of all the Linux distros I've sampled over the last 13 years, this has been the easiest to install, most gratifying to use, and the most resembling an OS I may install for my parents. Oh, and did I mention it's FREE?? And open sourced?


Installing Ubuntu takes 5-10 minutes (depending of what add-ons you want installed). It's been the easiest OS installation I've ever experienced. No need to know anything about partitioning, formatting, devices etc. Gone are the days of recompiling the kernel to proceed. In fact, the only time I needed to open a console window was when I've installed VMWare tools on the OS (instructions can be found here), and that's due to VMWare's fault.

Installing and uninstalling applications is a piece of cake, with a unified Add/Remove control panel, that allows categorizing, sorting and searching through installed applications easily and even download new applications. The automatic download also works smoothly, something I hope to see on a Windows platform in the future (Ah, Windows Update... must be the clunkiest web interface designed in Redmond) and since it's free, no "Windows Genuine Advantage" will call you a thief :)

Ubuntu comes pre-installed with Firefox, Open Office,multimedia applications and a slew of accessories. You can, of course, remove and add applications later. Drivers exist for many common devices, but like Vista, don't expect every device to be supported. The good news: device makers started realizing Linux is not a dirty word, and usually ship drivers with, or close to the Windows version.

About the only thing this OS won't do for you is games. But for that I have my trusty Xbox 360 (see? this is not a Microsoft bashing column ;)).

Finally, if you want another opinion on Ubuntu, Vista and even Mac OS X, try Rupert Goodwins' column "Vista Vs. the Gutsy Gibbon".

You can find out more about Ubuntu, its development philosophy and download the latest release at ubuntu.com.

The Leopard Ate My Vista

Tomorrow Apple releases Leopard (OS X 10.5) the latest update to OS X.

From all I've seen so far, it looks great and I was about to write a full post on it, but then got across Walt Mossberg's column Mossberg is the Wall Street Journal's technology guru and is one of the most respected and feared tech columnists in the US (feared, because one bad review from him can kill a product).

So, instead of wasting bandwidth by repeating everything, you can either read the column, or better yet, watch this short video:


Bottom line? Leopard is much better than Vista. But there wasn't much surprise there, was there?

Watch Out for the Razor!

In my previous adages column (see "Obey Murphy - It's the Law!") I started down the road of discovering and discussing those "named laws".

While there are many more adages out there, here are a few I found worth mentioning:

1. Name: Ockham's Razor (sometimes called "Occam").
   The adage: "Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem" (Explanations should never multiply assumptions without necessity).
   The person: William of Ockham
   Background: William was a Franciscan friar from the village of Ockham in England, and one of the major medieval philosophers.
   General interpretation: When two explanations are offered for a phenomenon, the simplest explanation is preferable.
   The term "razor" is used to "shave off" the unwanted explanations.
   Reality: Yes, it's possible that aliens stole your car. It's more probable that you forgot where you parked it.
   In software development: you can write this amazing recursive algorithm to sort through your amazingly well designed new data structure in O(nlogn), or you can use a standard collection and call the Sort() method...
   Recommended reading: What is Ockham's Razor?
2. Name: Clark's Law.
   The adage: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
   The Person: Arthur C. Clark.
   Background: a leading Sci-Fi writer (2001: A Space Odyssey) and an inventor/scientist.
   General interpretation: when no easy explanation is available, people will attribute any phenomenon to a higher power. Think of the light bulb. Now think what would be the reaction to it had you introduced it a 1000 years ago to a superstitious crowd.
   Reality: I'm not stepping into this trap :).
   Recommended Reading: Benford's Law.
3. Name: Peter's Principle.
   The adage: In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.
   The Person: Laurence J. Peter.
   Background: Peter was an educator specializing in hierarchies and bureaucracies. He first introduced the principle in his 1969 book titled... "The Peter Principle".
   General interpretation: people in an organization are always at one level above where they should be. Some team leads would be excellent developers. Some managers were excellent consultants. Sadly, they do not fit their current position.
   Reality: I'm not stepping into this one either :).
   Recommended reading: The Peter Principle.
4. Name: Brook's Law.
   The adage: adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.
   The person: Fred Brook.
   Background: Fred Brook was one of IBM's lead developers and in charge of its greatest undertaking in the 60's: the IBM 360 project. He documented his many experiences of that complex project in "The Mythical Man-month" - a book that became the cornerstone of project management books.
   Reality: from my experience, this is a true observation. New people, dropped into a late project, lack the history and knowledge of the project's requirements and origins. They also tend to think of themselves as "the solution" and the existing group as "the problem". Even if everyone play nice together, expensive time will be wasted on inter-team knowledge transfer.
   Recommended reading: The Mythical Man Month.
5. Name: Stigler's law of eponymy.
   The adage: No scientific discovery is named after its original discoverer.
   The person: Stephen Stigler, a University of Chicago statistics professor.
   The background: Stigler published his law in a 1980 paper titled... "Stigler's law of eponymy".
   General interpretation: throughout history, people published results based on others' research, plagiarized papers, or just plainly stole the works of others.
   Stigler's law just states the obvious: the person whose name is associated with a theory is either the last in line to work on in, or the first in line to steal it.
   Reality: funny enough, the full law should read "No scientific discovery, not even Stigler's law, is named after its original discoverer" - since Stigler attributed the original law to Robert K. Merton - a renowned sociologist.
   Recommended reading: What is eponymy?

Well, I had to finish with Stigler's law - as it may render the rest moot :)
That's it for now. More in the future (?)

A Rat with Good PR

No, this post will not deal with CEOs, or politicians. It's all about squirrels. Yep, those furry little animals (Sciurus carolinensis) that hop from tree to tree, collect nuts, and are considered "cute" just because it has a nice tail (i.e. good PR).

As someone who comes from a warm country, I was fascinated with squirrels ever since I first saw them roaming around my cousin's yard in Montreal. Industrious, smart, quick - and sporting a furry tail. Gray ones on the east coast, black ones on the west (called Douglas Squirrels, or Tamiasciurus douglasii), and scone-and-tea guzzling squirrels in the London parks :).

Yesterday, I went to pick up my mail. I'm standing there, rifling through the huge pile of spam (How come no one has invented a spam filter for a real mailbox yet?) when I hear a strange yowl. After a couple of more times, I looked up, and saw a squirrel trying to carry a pine cone twice its size up a branch. Every time it tugged and couldn't move it, it yowled again in frustration.

Some instinct told me to jump aside and indeed, just as I did, the squirrel threw that pine cone at me. Missed my head by an inch. This was only the second time in my life I've seen a squirrel attack a person (the first was in London. Word of advice: if you offer a squirrel a nut, don't pull your hand back. Once it has seen it - it's his).

There's no specific point I'm trying to make, just wanted to share this funny story.
But just to keep this post funny, have you ever heard of Squirrel Fishing?

Déjà Vu All Over Again

And here I am, exactly a week after my Holland post, in the same seat, at SJC, terminal C, writing a post. I traveled to Europe and back to California and now I'm en route to Madison Wisconsin, through Chicago. Seems like I've decided to give my jet lag a jet lag :(

I'm a bit pissed off right now. Someone offered me a ride from Chicago to Madison. Great, I've said, all I need to do is exit the Chicago airport and continue by car. WRONG! If you're a now-show for a flight, the rest of your ticket (i.e. the return trip) is automatically canceled (lucky I've checked that).

So, I went to the United Airlines stand and let them know that their services to Madison will not be required tonight. Surprise #2: I had to pay $175 for a re-ticketing. Apparently, flying from A to C through B, is cheaper than flying just to B (and if you feel confused, imagine how baffled am I).

It's about time someone kicks the @$$ of these airlines and make them streamline their ticketing and price models. A similar move has started with the mobile carriers.
Oh well, I'll try not to think too much about it, whilst I'm stuck in a middle seat (another price to pay for a late booking :( ).

Hillary Visits the Traveling Tech Guy

Those of you who browsed my blog late Saturday night, could have seen this banner. Please pay attention to the "Ads by Google" caption. Just wanted to make you aware of the fact that I don't control the content of these ads.

I just give Google a 200X200 pixel square, in which to display their ads. Basically, all I can do is ask for certain categories (and Google's interpetation of those is quite wide - observe a political ad in a "technology" spot) and that no adult content be displayed.

I have nothing against Mrs. Clinton, and I wish her good luck in the coming elections, but this is an a-political blog (other than my own personal politics. So, I love freedom - sue me :)). If anyone ever finds any offending banner on my blog, look for the "Google" caption - I'm blameless :)

Help a Child (and Help Yourself to a Laptop)

In case you haven't heard of Nicholas Negroponte's initiative "One Laptop Per Child" (also dubbed "the $100 laptop project"), the idea is to build a cheap laptop and equip children in 3rd world nations with an advanced education platform.

The project will start shipping actual laptops (codename XOPC) in December. The price of each unit will actually be $200, but even with a 100% budgetary miss, this is a wonderful machine:

1. It's rugged, can survive high temperatures and even be dropped repeatability (although, it's not recommended).
2. It has a camera and microphone buit in.
   
3. It's unique battery can run for 6 hours, if you play sound and video. Or 20 if you just read documents. It can be charged and discharged 2000 times (compared to 500 on a normal laptop battery).
4. Since the laptop will be operated in areas that have little or no electricity, it has a hand crank (like old cars). A minute of cranking will get you 10 minutes of battery power.
5. Not only does the laptop support regular wireless network, but it also supports mesh network. This means you can turn on your computer and automatically see and connect to anyone who has a similar laptop. This would allow sharing documents, video conferencing (think of a teacher finally able to talk to illiterate parents face-to-face) and is extremely well suited for class (or village environment). Furthermore, if even one computer in the mesh connects to the internet, the rest can share that connection, The more laptops connected, the better the bandwidth (see a demo here).
6. The operating system is a minimal, customized Linux. It's very resilient and made to run and support unique education applications and games, in many non-common languages. All software is open source and developed by volunteers.
   
7. Finally, my favorite feature: one key on the keyboard reveals the source of every application on the machine. The user can then change the software and test the results. If he makes a mess of things, the machine can easily restore the original.
   This feature will go a long way towards teaching kids to program, and get poor countries to start using their best resource: brains.
   

All this, and much more (full spec here) for $200! Granted, this is quite a slow machine and quite useless for common office or multimedia uses in the northern hemisphere (although I wish someone would copy the battery technology to regular laptops). More than that, to make it appeal to kids, it was designed like a toy: green box with 2 horns (actually the wireless antennae). As David Pogue put it, it looks like Shrek's laptop.

But remember who's the target crowd for this laptop: kids in poor countries. If they like it and use it, they can start joining the rest of the world.

So far, according to Pogue, 3 factors are preventing this project from turning into a rolling success:

1. Education ministers in poor countries - if people have these computers, they might actually have to start working. Not to mention the fact that access to the internet might give people bizarre ideas like "peace", "freedom", "knowledge", "travel" etc.
2. Big computer companies - Microsoft, Dell, Sun etc. Some of these guys have made nothing but bad comments about the project so far. Of course, giving such laptops with operating systems on them, "steals" a potential crowd of 3 billion people and educates them to things like "freeware" and "open source" (almost as worse as "freedom"...)
3. Critics - many humanitarians claim that there are bigger problems in those regions: war, famine, diseases, lack of water... How can a laptop solve those? Why not just give the money to those governments? Negroponte replies that usually results start with education. I would add that pouring money into those (mostly corrupt) governments, is akin to pouring money into the ocean.

This laptop will not be sold in the US. But, for a limited time in November, you can join the "Give 1 Get 1" offering: for $399, you'll donate a laptop to a child in a developing country and get one yourself (along with a tax deduction receipt for those in the US). You can donate as many laptops as you feel like. I just registered to donate one. I wonder if my nephews would appreciate this unbreakable laptop...

War Games Die Hard

"War Games" was my favorite movie as a kid. The idea that anyone with a modem can change his school marks, or start a thermonuclear war, blew me away.

I just started watching "Die Hard 4", the latest Bruce Willis action flick (don't worry, no spoilers), when a credit blinked before my eyes, and I had to rewind and read it again: "Based on the article 'A Farewell to Arms' by John Carlin".

A couple of seconds later, I found the link to the article. Fascinating material, written in 1997, it predicts a total war, waged entirely through computers, bring the enemy to its knees - without firing a single shot.

Frighteningly enough, it predicted what would happen 10 years later:
In April this year, Estonia, a small country in East Europe, decided to remove a Russian monument from it's capital. For 2 weeks after that, the country was put under massive DDOS (Distributed Denial of Service) and other net attacks, shutting down main banks, infrastructure and communication. Russia was involved, but later, NATO security experts found that several crime organizations and suspected terrorists took part in this attacks. But above all, this proved that the nightmare described in Carlin's article can become true: a country can be shut down by harming its network and communications. Read more about the Estonia attacks here.

I shudder to think what a similar attack on the US would cause. Think about the "Millennium Bug", only with bad guys with something to gain...

Last Post from Schiphol - Sanitation Solutions

Well, actually I wrote this post in Schiphol, but couldn't upload it in time. So the upload time would show this was uploaded from the Houston TX airport, where I'm sitting in the lounge after I missed my connection (damn Continental - they allow an hour connection from an international flight to a domestic one - absolutely no way to make it, especially with the long lines at border control).

Three last thoughts about Schiphol:

1. The lounges - absolutely no way to compare them to the drab Continental or Delta lounges in the US. Bigger, nicer, and with real food. The only lounge I've been to that was better than Schiphol's is in Zurich. Ah Europe...
   
   
2. Being late - every couple of seconds, you hear the following message on the speakers "Mr. Smith, flying to London on flight 123, you are delaying the flight. Make your way to gate G3. We'll proceed to offload your luggage.". Not "or we'll proceed...". It seems like if your name is called out, you're screwed (or else, English syntax is not their strong suite) :)
   
   If there are any lady readers in the crowd, please skip this item - it's meant for men's eyes only.
   
   
3. Urinals - the Schiphol sanitary department seems to have found the solution to the problem bothering mankind for thousands of years:
   men missing the urinal while answering nature's call. The solution? every urinal has a small fly sticker inside. The male instinct, since the hunter-gatherer's days, is to try and hit targets. If you hit the fly, the floor remains dry (hey, I just made a slogan :) -
   here's another one: Don't miss when you Piss ;) ).
   
   

That's it - back to the US...

Social Bookmarks

If you look at the bottom of every post, you'll see links to several social bookmark services.


If you're a member in any of those, feel free to bookmark any post there.

If you are not yet aware of these services, here's a brief overview:
These web sites allow you to save bookmarks, comment on them, share them with whoever you like (or the entire world) and open the content to discussion. Here are some examples:

1. Digg - the leader of the pack, with literally millions hits a day and a snazzy AJAX set of tools, this is Kevin Rose's main enterprise.
   Each article you submit can be "dugg" (favored by readers) and the most dugg stories appear on the front page - a status many geeks work hard to achieve :). So far, my posts yield , on average a modest 3-4 diggs (you need over a 1000 to be front page material).
   
   
2. Technorati - I've already discussed this technical blog aggregator, and you can either "fave" the entire blog (link on the right), or now, specific posts.
   
   
3. Del.icio.us - the bookmark site that started them all. With a brilliant url (its name is its address), and a very spartan interface. I've been using this site for 3-4 years now, mainly to sha