Snappletronics

The Onion...calls it?

2011-06-02T01:42:00.001-04:00

Sometimes life imitates art, sometimes art imitates life:

Exhibit A: "Drugs Win Drug War" [The Onion]
Exhibit B: "Global war on drugs has 'failed' say former leaders" [BBC]

Head in the Clouds... (or not)

2011-04-26T16:48:00.000-04:00

This was intentional, right? This doesn't happen by accident, and yet...

Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

(note definition 3 from Merriam-Webster)

It doesn't really give the impression that their Cloud Computing has much substance (whether it does or not is an entirely different question, this is just another post about strange branding).

Favorite Chrome extensions

2011-04-15T00:21:00.001-04:00

For Chrome/Chromium users, here are my favorite extensions. What are yours?

Privacy/security related

AdBlock -- probably the most important one here. I can't stand browsing without it.
Disconnect -- blocks tracking web page elements from major providers (Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc.)
Explode -- expands most URLs created by URL rewriters (e.g. TinyURL)
KB SSL Enforcer -- This one actually causes a bit of trouble, so you may not actually want to use it. It tries to ensure that you're talking to websites over encrypted channels by detecting whether there's an SSL version of each site. Even though it has systems to override its decisions, it still ends up screwing up a fair amount of the time (especially with online banking) since many sites don't actually mirror their SSL sites correctly.
Keep My Opt-Outs -- opts out of personalized Google ads

Web site integration

BugMeNot Lite -- makes a little widget pop up in the Omnibox when BugMeNot is available
Delicious Bookmarks -- bookmarks pages quickly in Delicious. There are many Delicious extension, but I like this one since it shows you tag suggestions.
Google Docs Viewer (by Google) -- fast access to all your documents, easy to open them in new windows
Google Voice (by Google) -- shows number of items in your Google Voice inbox, makes all phone numbers click-to-call
Minimalist for Google Calendar and Minimalist for Gmail -- these two let you disable many individual elements on Google Calendar and Gmail. On my laptop where there's limited screen real estate, this helps quite a bit.

Browser functionality

Google Quick Scroll -- when you search for something and follow a link on the search results, this presents the option of jumping to the location of the snippet on the page
History of these2 -- lets you search history more easily by time and site
RSS Subscription Extension (by Google) -- adds RSS widgets to the Omnibox

Public service announcement: Space is big.

2011-02-28T23:17:00.000-05:00

Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.

-- Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Just peanuts, visualized:

via APOD

Reduce, reuse, research...then recyle

2011-01-11T02:22:00.005-05:00

Just a quick plug for an awesome recycling search engine: Earth911

You say what you want to recycle and a zipcode and it tells you places that will recycle it. Very well-done website. At least where I am, there are many local places that will recycle all sorts of non-trival objects (rechargeable batteries, Plastic #5, CFLs, etc.).

Unsubscribing from Your Essential Shopper

2010-12-06T11:03:00.013-05:00

Take it back, take it back, take that thing right outta here.
Right away, far away, take that thing right outta here.
-- Take It Back (Cream)

I've been trying to permanently remove all junk mail coming to my apartment (as well as previous residences). CatalogChoice, as I've previously posted, has been great for this. However, I still get weekly junk mail from "yes! Your Essential Shopper," part of the Bay Area News Group. I couldn't find anything in my web searches for 'unsubscribe "your essential shopper"' so I'm writing this post.

Inside the all-ad newspaper, I managed to find a phone number (1-800-598-4637) and called it asking to unsubscribe [1]. They were helpful and took me off the list. Now (presumably) they will stop sending me this direct-to-recycling-bin publication every Sunday.

[1] It's possible that the number might be different for you if you're in a different area. In this case, the best I can say is that the newspaper should include a phone number at the bottom of the second page.

Three things for improving Facebook privacy

2010-11-12T13:32:00.003-05:00

We're not gonna take it
Never did and never will
We're not gonna take it
Gonna break it, gonna shake it,
Let's forget it better still

-- We're Not Gonna Take It (The Who)

ReclaimPrivacy: everyone should be using this and scan periodically. This is an extremely easy way of detecting which privacy leaks you haven't plugged.
Remove Facebook Like buttons: a Greasemonkey script to rid you of these from non-Facebook pages. These buttons are nasty and let Facebook track you as you surf around the web.
Facebook Link Rewriter: another Greasemonkey script to stop Facebook from tracking which links you click on.

Sure would be great if I could stop doing these types of posts, eh?

Steal this idea: Off-hold notification

2010-11-07T19:40:00.004-05:00

Woke up this morning I was all alone

Saw your picture by the telephone

I was missing you oh so bad

Wish I had you here to hold

All I've got is this touch-tone phone

So I guess I'll give you a call

-- Telephone Song (Stevie Ray Vaughan)

Here's another app idea for smart phone software developers. When I'm put on hold and I don't have a headset, I'd like to put the phone down until I am taken off of hold. I'd like it so that when the phone "hears" a loud signal over the line (it may need to do some noise cancellation in case there is noise on my end) the phone will vibrate or (optionally) switch to speakerphone.

This would mostly be for talking to people but a harder problem is handling customer service centers. (Ideally, customer service telephone systems would take your phone number and have an agent give you a call when they're free rather than wasting time on phone calls, but few companies do this currently) In these cases, it might be able to use a voice/music detector and check for repeated messages. Many of things you hear while you're on hold alternate between music and voice, so this might end up notifying you too much. With luck, it could be trained that some pieces were recordings (by memorizing sound "fingerprints" or something like that like) for use in later phone calls.

Quick hacks: webnumbr for fast scraping (of a single number)

2010-04-21T02:41:00.004-04:00

Like the previous quick hack, I had little to do with this -- just demonstrating a tool. In this case, the goal was to graph the national average for certificate of deposit interest rates over time (you can find this information at Bankrate.com). At SHDH37, Drew told me about webnumbr which does exactly this (and was possibly developed at a previous SHDH) -- you pick a webpage and then select a single element from that page. webnumbr will scrape the webpage at an interval of your choosing and graph the data. I'm not wild about their graphing (prefer something interactive like this or Google Charts) but it looks like you can get the raw data in various formats (CSV, etc.) which would let you use other graphing methods, overlay charts, etc.

If you're interested, here are graphs for the average 1-year and 2-year CD rates.

Quick hacks: Yahoo Pipes for RSS feed filtering

2010-04-19T18:58:00.003-04:00

In my Copious Free Time(tm), I've been working on some very quick projects. I'm writing them up since, while many of them are quite simple, they highlight some interesting tools.

I used to read the "Marmaduke Explained" blog at this website. It has since moved here but the RSS feed includes other entries as well. Using Yahoo Pipes, I was quickly able to create a new RSS feed which only includes entries that include Marmaduke in the title. See the pipe I made here (output available as RSS, JSON, email, etc.). Yahoo Pipes is, like the name implies, a series of tubes -- nodes in the graph feed perform operations and feed into other nodes. So, my point is that Yahoo Pipes is a cool piece of software and probably underutilized -- the basic filtering that I do is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg for what it can do (for example, there are "translate" and "location extractor" nodes). If they added basic scraping abilities, I'd likely use it even more (but see upcoming posts for different ways to do scraping...).

Facebook's War on Privacy

2009-12-10T03:31:00.011-05:00

Naegle: I guarantee I can find some new revenue streams. Step one: Let's sell some ad space. Reverend, how would you feel about wearing this robe? [holds up a robe with "Fatso's Hash House" embroidered on it]
Lovejoy: Mmm...conflicted?
Burns: Too bad! You've already signed the deal.
Naegle: Actually, he hasn't.
Burns: Oh. Well, we highly value your input. [menacing] Until you sign the deal...
-- Simpsons, She of Little Faith

I am deeply concerned with Facebook's new privacy policy. As I understand it, the most damaging change is that a good portion of every Facebook profiles will now be public -- name, photo, location, groups, friends, etc. I can't fathom how this ever seemed like it would be a good idea. The possibilities for exploitation are astronomical. Anyway, I'll stop ranting now and point you to other people who have written much more eloquent pieces on this and suggest some actions you can take.

More information

Detailed description of what the new privacy policy means
ACLU's dotRights.org campaign
EFF's analysis of the changes
I hope that they will have an action page soon, but I don't see anything yet.
The case for online privacy
Bruce Schneier's response to Google's CEO (who unfortunately has a similar attitude towards privacy)

What you can do

Share these links on Facebook, Twitter, and email! That's the easiest way to spread this information to people who need it.
Sign ACLU's petition to Facebook.
Visit the dotRight's Take Action page.
A properly organized (inter)national protest might bring this the media coverage it deserves... (need help from EFF and ACLU for this)

(P.S. Yes, there are some positive aspects of the changes. However, these come at too great a cost and they're completely independent of the negative portions.)

Update (12.11.2009): Some more links as this unfolds:

Why Privacy Matters (Guillaume Marceau)
Facebook tosses graph privacy into the bin (Joseph Bonneau)
An ironic, unanticipated outcome

Why I dislike text messages

2009-08-22T01:54:00.004-04:00

This article succinctly explains the main reason I dislike text messages: (emphasis not in original)

"...Wireless data service is AT&T's only bright spot, up a whopping 26% per customer. How so? As any parent of teenagers knows, text messages are 20 cents each, or $5,000 per megabyte. After the first month and a $320 bill, we all pony up $10 a month for unlimited texting plans. ..."

I have been waiting for someone to shake things up and get cell phones using instant messaging and/or email rather than text messaging which, in my mind, consists entirely of disadvantages (expensive coupled with payment on receipt, limited message length, impossible to know if messages are even received, ...). With luck, this will help as well.

Weird Craiglist scam

2009-08-21T01:18:00.008-04:00

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name
But what's puzzling you
Is the nature of my game
-- Sympathy for the Devil (Rolling Stones)
Dear Internet,

I am attempting to sell a desk on craigslist and received an unusual response, quoted here in its entirety:

Date: Thu, 20 Aug 2009 07:53:48 -0500
Subject: Re: L-shaped desk, almost new - $150 (East Side)
From: trendy carley <trendycarley0@gmail.com>

Hello ,
I appreciate your response to my inquiry. I'm interested in buying it
from you. I would've come and inspect it myself but I am on a business
trip overseas and wont be back for a while.
Please do withdraw ,with immediate effect the advert from Web as I dont
mind adding $50 for you to do that so I can be rest assured that it is
held for me. I should believe it is in good condition as stated. I will
be making the payment via a Certified Check which my secretary will
mail across to you. I'll be picking it from you with the aid of my
mover. My Mover will be coming to pick it from you once the Certified
Check has been cashed.
If condition of sales works for you I then ask that you get back to me
with the following details so that payment can be posted ASAP:
Required Information

1.Name to be issued to...
2.Contact Address(City,State,Zip code,Country):
3.Contact telephone number:(home,cell or work)
4.Clear pictures showing details

Do get back to me as soon as possible with this details for payment  to
be made out to you immediately you get it on time. Also I will want you
to remove the advert as soon as possible and I dont mind paying $50 for
you to have that done ASAP as I said earlier, so no one else is lined up
for it. Thanks Hoping to hear from you soon.

Best Regards

Just what is the nature of this guy's game (not to mention his (her?) rather unlikely name)? Completely bizarre that one would pay someone to remove an ad and weirder still that one would expect them to do it before receipt of payment. Additionally, the desk is only being sold for $150 so $50 is a considerable markup (plus he'll certainly be paying a bundle for the mover). Then there's the spot where he seemingly leaves out my name from the template ("Hello, ") and the redundancy of asking for a ZIP code and country (at least, I've always heard other countries refer to them as postal codes).

I'm really curious where he's going with this. Some ideas: (please post ideas in the comments)

He's just gathering names, addresses, and/or telephone numbers.
No check will ever come but maybe a mover might.
Check will come and bounce. Mover will come and bounce with the desk.
There's some second part of this scheme that is too tough to predict at this point.

One other tidbit is that the original email from him (which came from trendycarley02@gmail.com instead and asked me rather simply "Is it in good condition..?i am interested.") was immediately tossed into the spam folder by Gmail.

I've been thinking about comedic responses. So far, the best one I've come up with is posting his response on the Internet.

Steal this idea: Google, optimize those links!

2009-08-12T00:45:00.005-04:00

You know, those links at the top of Gmail and related services. Mine say:

Gmail Calendar Documents Photos Reader Sites Web more ▼

Yours do too? How strange. I would think these links should be personalized if not customizable. Google knows which ones I click on since I'm logged in all the time. Why not get rid of the ones I never click on (Sites, Photos, and Web -- if I need to do a web search, I'll use the address bar in my web browser) and show the ones that I always have to find in the ▼ like Scholar. Some people would probably object to a fluid UI (i.e. if Google adjusted these automatically) and I think the preferred methods these days are to have computers suggest changes but not perform them without user intervention. Maybe there's some plugin/extension/religion that lets you change these? (not that this is really a high priority...)

Steal this idea: Phone scammer/spammer warnings

2009-05-27T23:54:00.008-04:00

Hear my phone ringin',
sound like a long distance call
-- Muddy Waters, "Long Distance Call"

Why telemarketing is an opt-out rather than opt-in process is beyond me. Nevertheless, if you do get a call from a number you don't recognize, you may want to run it by whocalled.us. I recently got a call from a telemarketer (see my report here*) and had an idea for a program to run on the phones of the future. When I say phones of the future, I mean roughly tomorrow since this idea is so simple it should be very easily doable on an iPhone, Android phone, or something else easily programmable. At least, I would hope this is easy to write (I haven't ever used these phones' APIs).

The idea is this: When I get a call from an unknown number, my phone should look it up on whocalled.us. Possibly there would be a reputation system and it could automatically report good calls to the site (though there are some potential privacy issues here which would need to be addressed) and give you the option to mark a previous call as a scam. Integration with donotcall.gov would be nice too.

* Incidentally, this phone number appears to be running multiple scams. The number is used to connect people with various scams so that the companies actually doing the scams are harder to trace. That's why the representative on the other line said that I had called her.

Technical: Getting Skype working with Bluetooth on Ubuntu with AMD64

2009-05-10T13:13:00.005-04:00

If you want to use Skype with Bluetooth headsets on recent versions of Ubuntu Jaunty with an AMD64 architecture, this article might be of interest. If those words didn't make any sense, this article is definitely skippable.

When using Skype with a Bluetooth headset, I was getting error messages of the following form:

ALSA lib ../../../src/pcm/pcm.c:2165:(snd_pcm_open_conf) Cannot open shared library /usr/lib32/alsa-lib/libasound_module_pcm_bluetooth.so

Since Skype only exists in 32-bit mode currently, you can only run it in AMD64 using the linux32 command. However, this requires 32-bit versions of all the libraries that Skype would need, including bluez-alsa if you want to use a Bluetooth headset. Ubuntu currently attempts to handle this with their ia32-libs package but the current version of this package is missing its bluez-alsa libraries (as indicated in the error message). This is the bug that has been reported here.

I have a horrible hack to fix this problem, mostly because I can't find where ia32-libs development takes place nor the Ubuntu development process. I downloaded the 32-bit version of bluez-alsa and used alien -t to convert it into a tar.gz file. I then extracted its contents and made an extremely simple Makefile with this content:

install: cp ./usr/lib/alsa-lib/libasound_module_ctl_bluetooth.so /usr/lib32/alsa-lib/ cp ./usr/lib/alsa-lib/libasound_module_pcm_bluetooth.so /usr/lib32/alsa-lib/
Next, I created a Debian package with checkinstall which you can find here. To my knowledge, these files are missing in Ubuntu Karmic too, so this might help those users as well.

Takeaway message: If you want to try my hack, download my new package (which I admitedly haven't been able to test on any other machines, so any feedback is welcome) and use your favorite package installer (the graphical one is probably the easiest) to install it.

Steal this idea: Mobile public transportation planner

2009-04-11T14:22:00.003-04:00

If I had an iPhone or Android-based phone instead my current piece of cellphone-shaped garbage, I would want this application: While walking someone, the user tells the application their intended destination ("I'm walking home now") and the application uses GPS information and a data connection to lookup public transportation alternatives to walking. It then suggests small detours or pauses in your journey (e.g. "Wait here, you're at a bus stop. When the #42 comes in ~2 minutes, get on.") which get you closer to your destination. As far as I know, this shouldn't be that hard to write and I'm surprised I haven't heard of it so far (of course, not owning a shiny phone, I don't follow all the apps written for them). It could also get more sophisticated by learning your pace or common routes and locations. In any event, this would be a useful tool and I think I'd take the bus more often if I had it.

Thesis proposal nightmare #1

2009-03-31T09:59:00.004-04:00

Invoking Dream either by reading or talking about him (as I was doing recently) tends to cause screwy dreams. This pattern continues...

It is April 4th -- 10 days before my real thesis proposal. I've done one practice talk which indicated that more practice talks were in order, yet somehow I'm giving the proposal anyway. Weirder still, I'm giving the proposal in my parent's family room on an old television instead of with a projector. Only four people have shown up -- two faculty and two students. Nobody in my area. It is only when my advisor Eugene shows up that I realize that not only is the rest of my committee not present at the proposal (one of the attending faculty members assures me is not a problem). I then realize that I've somehow scheduled my thesis proposal during a major conference which my thesis committee members (including Eugene) are attending.

Wake up.

Error: Too many errors

2009-03-18T10:15:00.004-04:00

Count the errors. There are at least three:
Error 1: Saying there was an error, then saying there wasn't.
Error 2: Saying there was an error, then saying there wasn't when there really was -- it really didn't rip the DVD.
Error 3: Title says "Error while burning" but it was ripping, not burning.

Is this a bad joke? While trying to rip a DVD, I got this message from Brasero. This is dailywtf material but I haven't been able to find any previous postings on it. While ripping the DVD, the output file grew, but apparently, Brasero deleted it at the end. Also, there are no messages from the kernel about a DVD read error, so we appear to be hallucinating problems.

Steal this idea: Musical intersections

2009-02-05T17:22:00.006-05:00

Listening to you,
I get the music.
Gazing at you,
I get the heat.
Following you,
I climb the mountains.
I get excitement at your feet.
-- The Who, "We're Not Gonna Take It"

There are a couple times when two or more people want to listen to some form of streaming music (road/train trip, shared office space, etc.). Streaming radio sites like Pandora should have the option of combining multiple peoples' musical taste and come up with music that both people would like. Being able to generate a road trip playlist for portable music players would be nice too, though there are the obvious copyright issues.

I imagine coming up with good shared playlists is trickier than just taking the intersection of the songs/musical features. Ultimately, it would depend on the model of listeners tastes. Of course, in many cases, these intersections can be small (my freshman year college roommate and I both liked Stevie Wonder but had little else in common musically).

Year of the Jetpack

2008-12-19T11:11:00.005-05:00

Dear

Sincerely,
The Future (2008)

P.S.

Open Access (almost)

2008-12-03T12:49:00.005-05:00

The journal Computational Linguistics has opted to join the movement of journals switching to the open access model, where academic articles are viewable in full for free without any membership fees. The idea is that publicly funded research should be available to the public. Anyway, now the punchline. Try to download the full article about this (outside of an academic setting) and you'll find that you can't without a membership account for MIT Press (of course, this is exactly the model we're moving away from, hence why this is only slightly ironic, I think).

Going somewhere?

2008-11-09T22:38:00.002-05:00

Marge: But Main Street's still all cracked and broken...
Bart: Sorry, Mom, the mob has spoken!
All: Monorail!
-- The Simpsons, Marge vs. The Monorail

I think this post pinpoints some of the problems with our transportation infrastructure very nicely. Short of the unnecessary Simpsons quote, I don't really have much to add except that I hope this article reaches a wide audience.

Dancing Deer writes back (again)

2008-11-09T22:18:00.003-05:00

Those of you following this blog may remember my letter to Dancing Deer (see here and here). The story now has a new ending which is both surprising and happy. The president of Dancing Deer, Trish Karter, has added her two cents on the matter (read her comment here). I think she makes reasonable points in her comments and I very much appreciate hearing from her. Additionally, I'm glad that I was wrong about this whole issue -- it turns out that they ran a study with the intent of determining ways of minimizing petrol in their packaging -- and I would like to apologize to Dancing Deer for any negative press (though I assure them that readers of this blog are few and far between). In any event, I think more than enough digital ink has been spilled over what started as a minor discussion at a weekly tea and we can hopefully lay the issue to rest now.

Food talk

2008-09-17T23:44:00.004-04:00

Everything you are doing is wrong.
-- Janosh, Ghostbusters II

Over the summer, I tried to watch a lot of TED talks. I've been meaning to post a list of my favorites (real soon now...). I've also been reading Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food recently and while I'm only half finished, it has a lot in common with Mark Bittman's TED talk What's wrong with what we eat. Given the similarities, I'll cover both items here (though the book is fresh in my mind so my emphasis will be on it).

Neither author puts much faith in the nutritional authorities in this country. Pollan's book discusses how hard it is to run a nutritional study measuring the Right Things and blames scientific reductionism for giving us misinformation. To accurately study the dietary effects in complex systems like people is likely impossible (or at least extremely challenging with current technology) given the difficulty in actually measuring both the inputs and outputs. Worse, Pollan believes that nutrition science has not succeeded in making us healtheir but in fact has pushed us in the opposite direction -- ever since nutritionists have replaced parents as the authorities, this country has gotten less healthy along many dimensions. To be fair, some amount of this can likely be attributed to corporations like McDonalds and Kraft, but that's another post.

I've always been skeptical of nutrition science given its various flip-flopping studies on foods like chocolate and wine. In any event, my goal here is not to provide a review of these items, but to encourage you to read Pollan's book, or, if you only have 20 minutes and 8 seconds, watch Bittman's talk.

Wait, what?

2008-08-11T18:06:00.006-04:00

Marge: I don't understand why we have to build a ray gun to aim at a planet I never even heard of.

Homer: Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos.
-- "Treehouse of Horror VII" [snpp]

McCain and Obama are looking more and more similar each day! Their automatic image picker seems to have some problems telling the two candidates apart... (seen on huffingtonpost.com, emphasis not in original)

Steal this idea: Scratch paper printer

2008-07-20T21:28:00.005-04:00

Somewhat counterintuitively, the Computer Science department at Brown produces a ton of paper (literally a ton if you choose the Right time scale...). A good portion of our printouts only use one side of the paper (though people are generally good about printing things duplex, 2-up, etc.). Much of this scratch paper is recycled immediately while some is put in a scratch paper pile. After trying to reduce our printouts, what we can do to lower our paper usage? Last year, I made a "notebook" out of scratch paper. a folder, and some clips which worked out very nicely for a course. While I like this method and would like to see it done on a large scale, it seems unlikely to reuse much of our scratch paper supply.

One idea that I'd like to investigate is a "scratch paper printer." This would be a printer stocked entirely with scratch paper. There are couple potential issues. The main issue is that I've been told that printers jam more frequently on scratch paper[1]. I want to find out if this is true for all or just some printers. Ideally, we can find a (potentially slower) printer which doesn't jam as much on scratch paper. A lesser issue is keeping the printer stocked since scratch paper doesn't come as easily as store-brought reams, but since this can be done on demand by users, I'm less concerned. Please contact me if you have any comments on this proposal, since I'll put pitching it to the department in the coming future.

[1] It might be interesting to try to design a printer which is more robust to paper jams (steal this idea, please) but beyond what I'm looking for at this point.

These version numbers have version numbers!

2008-07-13T14:24:00.009-04:00

This product that was on TV was available for four easy payments of $19.95. I would like a product that was available for three easy payments and one complicated payment. We can't tell you which payment it is, but one of these payments is going to be hard.
-- Mitch Hedburg

Version numbers in Ubuntu Linux can get pretty intense. Here is a list of 13 version numbers from Ubuntu packages in increasingly ridiculous order (that is, order of increasing ridiculous-ness (ridiculousity?)).

15 (just a number, possibly too simple)
1.2-2 (three numbers, reasonably simple)
2.6.24.17.19 (standard Linux kernel version number, very simple)
2007-12ubuntu3.1 (year, month, and Ubuntu version)
1:8.04+20080630 (version with a full date in it)
3.0.28a-1ubuntu4.3 (version and Ubuntu version)
4.0.1ubuntu5.8.04.1 (package with version and a more complicated Ubuntu version)
4.4.0-1ubuntu4~hardy1 (version with Ubuntu version and Ubuntu distribution subversion)
3:0.cvs20060823-3.1ubuntu4 (version, CVS date, and Ubuntu version)
8.61.dfsg.1~svn8187-0ubuntu3.3 (version, SVN version, and Ubuntu version)
20080508+git20080601-0ubuntu0.8.04 (version and two dates in it -- okay, one is a GIT version number too)
3.0.1+build1+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.8.04.1 (version plus some tags then a complicated Ubuntu version)
10.0.1.218+10.0.0.525ubuntu1~hardy1+really9.0.124.0ubuntu2 (no comment)

(document version: 1.2.62.cvs20080713~svn2942~17ubuntu2.43.1.3-5~binonly~rc7:1)

A story told through bullet points

2008-06-27T00:40:00.009-04:00

Your order is in progress.

Jun 21

Order placed - Your order was placed with PC Universe. A confirmation email was sent to you by Google.

Jun 21

Order received - PC Universe received your order.

Jun 21

$53.00 charge - Your credit card (REDACTEDCARD xxx-XXXX) was charged for $53.00. "GOOGLE *PC Universe" will appear on your credit card statement.

Jun 24

Seller contacted - You sent PC Universe an email with the subject: What is the status of my order?
Message: "Hi, just wondering what the status of my order is. Thanks! David"

Jun 27

Seller contacted - You sent PC Universe an email with the subject: I'd like to cancel my order
Message: "This level of service is unacceptable. The item was listed as in stock when I ordered it, yet apparently has not shipped yet. I called earlier today and was told that it was pending an incoming shipment (meaning that the website was lying) and that it would ship today (which it clearly hasn't). Additionally, my earlier request for the status of the order was completely ignored. Please cancel my order and refund my money."

Not necessary!

2008-05-20T16:59:00.006-04:00

Are they trying to get blocked?

(see comments)

Flying the Sarcastic Skies

2008-04-24T14:22:00.005-04:00

Some funny quotes from the pilot on flight UA830, (4.21.2008) to the best of my memory:

(before takeoff) "Well, folks, the baggage handlers said that they were done loading, but they're clearly not. If you're sitting in the back right-hand part of the plane, you probably have a better idea what's going on than I do."

(after departing about 30 minutes late and landing) "We were able to make up about 10 minutes in the air. Apparently no good deed goes unpunished as someone else has taken our gate."

Google Transit now in Rhode Island

2008-04-22T17:37:00.003-04:00

A semi-Earth Day related post for Earth Day:

Google Transit now covers RIPTA buses in Rhode Island. I will use it for all my route planning needs. (In fact, I don't have a choice as the official RIPTA trip planner now simply embeds Google Maps.) Unfortunately, while the service is quite useful now, imagine what it would be like if it included systems that actually connect? Currently, the Bay Area appears to be the only area in the US which covers multiple systems (and it already has its own multi-system route planner). I think Google has an initiative to help transit agencies publish their information (which allows us to use alternative route planners).

The trip planner passed my sanity check: I asked for directions to the airport and it was smart enough to know that one should never take the 20 (it always leaves earlier and arrives later than the 14 -- not sure what its purpose really is).

Also, some tiny annoyances involving the walking direction. Walking directions currently lack detail (known bug) and you need to do more searches to get distances or routes for these (though strangely, timing information is given instead). There are also no controls on the preferred amount of walking distance.

The Tea in Honesty

2008-04-16T09:51:00.003-04:00

No, this isn't an article about Honest Tea. Nor is it even a big deal, but as I sit here with my smoke detector having its second false alarm of the day, I thought I would share this.

It's hard to say if this happens more often in the tea industry than others, but there's a certain lack of honesty for many of these tea flavors. Take Good Earth's Red Tea Raspberry. The front of the box (seen here) shows pictures of raspberries, which isn't surprising. Until you look at the ingredients:

Rooibos, Chicory Root, Chamomile, Hibiscus, Ginger Root, Rose Petals, Spearmint, Licorice Root and Natural Flavors.

As I see it, even if those "Natural Flavors" are raspberry, they're a bit too far down the list for that flavor to invoke raspberries.

Here's another example: Republic of Tea's Wild Berry Plum (seen here). Again, the box shows what appears to be wild berries and a plum in the background. The ingredients read: China green tea, black currant pieces, natural flavors. At first glance, this might seem worse than the first case, but wild berry is another name for black currant, (in case you didn't know) so the only missing item is pear. Also, unlike the previous example, this tea actually tastes something like pear and black currant (I was told that I should add sugar if I wanted the raspberry tea to taste like raspberries).

How widespread is this? Please post your mistitled teas to comments. Also, your thoughts on why the tea companies do this. I guess raspberry teas sell better than "Chamomile Hibiscus Ginger Rose" teas (or whatever the real name should be). Neverthless, I won't be buying it anymore since I was looking for something that actually had raspberries in it.

Strange satirical dream

2008-03-23T10:13:00.004-04:00

I had a dream where a friend was having trouble breathing and needed medical attention so I tried to call 911. I've been told that when you call 911 from a cell phone, the cell phone goes into a sort of lockdown mode, though I'm not sure if this is true. In any event, after misdialing several times, my phone went into a strange mode and launched a tiny web browser rather than connecting my call. The 911 "website" was a disaster -- all I wanted was an ambulance, but the website had all of the most frustrating aspects of websites:

It required registration ("New user? Click here!")
It had CAPTCHAs which were very difficult to type on the telephone keypad. Apparently, the site was the target of fake 911 calls by spammers.
The web page was extremely long and hard to navigate on the phone.
I think it had advertisements.

Obviously, this is not the future of emergency telephone services, but I find it sort of amusing in some ways. I woke up before things could get worse.

Laws, sausages, and misleading packaging

2008-02-26T12:09:00.005-05:00

Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made.
-- Otto von Bismarck

The connection between laws and sausages is clear, but what about sausages and false advertising? While I don't eat pork, I do eat chicken and occasionally buy (what I thought were) chicken sausages. While I try to examine food items (ingredients, manufacturers, etc.) I clearly missed a thorough reading of these. Of the three or four brands of chicken sausages I saw in an overpriced health-focused supermarket (you know what I'm talking about), all but one use a pork skin casing. This bothers me since I bought the chicken sausages to avoid pork and have assumed that others do the same. Additionally, since there is one brand that doesn't use pork, that tells me that it's possible.

See Al Fresco or Aidells (pick "Chicken and Apple") for some examples. I'll update this post later when I determine which brand is the "good" one.

Cutting down on snail-mail spam

2008-02-25T11:02:00.008-05:00

Following up on this post: I got the nth credit card application in the mail and finally looked closely enough to see this phone number:

1-888-567-8688 (1-888-5-OPTOUT)

Searching for that phone number takes you to the FTC Privacy Protection Page, where you'll find several useful links for cutting down on junk mail from credit card companies and direct marketers.
In related links, take a look at carbonrally where you can "compete" for carbon reduction by making various promises. One of the actions you can take involves going to CatalogChoice.

Update (2.26.2008): A friend shares a link to GreenDimes -- a similar service, though this one seems to cost money.

Copying links from Google search results

2008-02-13T13:35:00.007-05:00

You may have noticed that when you copy links from Google search results, you don't get what you expected -- when you hover over them, your browser says one thing, but when you right-click on them, it says another. For example, searching for snappletronics, Google gives you the code for a link like this: (emphasis not in original, obviously)

<a href="http://snappletronics.blogspot.com/"
class="l"
onmousedown="return rwt(this,'','','res','1','AFQjCNGxo5T82OPvPMIGpTmHTE3JzTBwzg','&sig2=vMD0Ey969KDVrwhFXwVgBw')">

What does this mean? It means that when you right-click on the link, some Javascript function gets to run and change the link, so the link turns from Snappletronics to Snappletronics (watch the tooltip or your browser's status bar). The second link tells Google that I clicked the link and maybe other identifying information. I believe this surreptitious link-changing is a pretty strong violation of "Don't be evil."

Fortunately, there's help if you use Firefox. If you have Greasemonkey, this script will remove their hooks and prevent them from changing the link on you.

Update (11.12.2010): The above script is now outdated. Depending on when you read this, this script might be a decent replacement.

Recommended viewing: Daily Show 1.30.2008

2008-02-08T14:02:00.000-05:00

Jon Stewart takes apart CNN's The Situation Room. Hilarity ensues.

"'Pottery Barn' is in for a world of hurt."

2007-12-28T19:23:00.000-05:00

Kramer, entering Jerry's apartment: Well...I've had it with these jackbooted thugs!
Jerry: 'Pottery Barn'?
Kramer: I got three 'Pottery Barn' catalogs in one day. That makes eight this month.
Jerry: Why don't you just throw 'em out?
Kramer: Oh, no. I've been saving them up here in your apartment. And now, it's payback time. 'Pottery Barn' is in for a world of hurt.
-- The Junk Mail (Seinfeld)

I just learned from Sierra Club Magazine about CatalogChoice, a site which will help you unsubscribe from magazines and catalogs. I intend to unsubscribe myself from the numerous items which go straight to recycling. I will also unsubscribe all the previous residents of my apartment from their magazines as well.

Kramer, throwing his catalogs in the Pottery Barn store: Hey, you like sending out catalogs!? How do you like gettin' 'em back!?

Photos: Ice Picks II

2007-12-11T11:34:00.000-05:00

Pictures of various nearby frozen items (VNFI) can be seen here.

Dancing Deer writes back

2007-11-30T10:46:00.001-05:00

(Update 11.9.2008: be sure to see their second response in the comments of this post here and my final post on the issue.)

I got a response to my email to Dancing Deer bakeries (see this post):

Dear David,

Thank you for your e-mail. The Deers always appreciate feedback. As you mention in your e-mail, Dancing Deer is a company that prides itself on environmentally friendly practices - this means packaging too!

Originally, the product development team intended the shortbread cookies to be a "lunchbox" cookie. This meant that the individual packaging (though arguably excessive) would allow parents to easily add a quick dessert to their child's lunch. Since the cookies' usage has become more widespread, we have (and will continue to) consider using less packaging. I'll be sure to pass your suggestion onto the packing team!

Thanks again, David - it's conscientious consumers like you, who allow us to continually improve our products!

Best,

Alison

Customer Service

I'm fairly satisfied with the response -- it's not automated based on keywords and they clearly read the email. We'll see if they actually change the packaging, but this is a start.

Recommended viewing: Daily Show 3.7.2005

2007-11-20T10:48:00.000-05:00

Or specifically, this clip of Lewis Black where he talks about Mafia cops, accountability in Abu Graib, and terrorist watch lists. Depressing yet hilarious.

Oh Deer

2007-11-12T21:58:00.002-05:00

(Update: See their first and second response. This post is essentially retracted.)

I'm having trouble taking Dancing Deer's eco-friendly claims seriously. It is possible that they are extremely environmentally friendly and socially responsible in almost all cases, but I fear that their Triple-Chocolate Shortbread Cookies contains a major oversight. But first, I'll describe their policy.

In their own words:

Caring for the Environment
To the extent possible we make choices in our packaging, production and facilities management, which are friendly to the environment.
(source: Dancing Deer: How We Think)

The cookies in question come twelve to a (purportedly recycled) cardboard box. Each two cookies are wrapped in plastic resulting in six plastic wraps rather than wrapping all twelve at once. They'd use much less plastic in the latter case. I'm assuming the silly wrapping is for freshness and, as the website says, "makes them lunch box friendly." So apparently, being lunch box friendly is more important than being fully environmental friendly. See (for example -- there are tons) this article for some more information about plastic's environmental unfriendliness.

Possibly what bothers me the most is that Dancing Deer has been written up and praised multiple times for their "environmental packaging":

The Innovator Award is the most recent accolade for the natural foods company that has received public acclaim for their fresh baked products, community activism, and artful and environmental packaging.
(source: SocialFunds.org)

Dancing Deer uses all natural ingredients, minimal packaging and environmentally-friendly materials.
(source: Winning Workplaces)

[Dancing Deer's CEO] also often hears praise for the $8 million company's philanthropy, green packaging, and commitment to its 65 employees and inner-city Boston. [...] Its cookies, brownies, cakes, and mixes, all packaged in recycled fiber and whimsically illustrated with stick-figure bakers...
(source: BusinessWeek)

I'm willing to believe that Dancing Deer could potentially be an otherwise environmentally aware and socially responsible company, but it seems very strange to praise them for something that is clearly bogus. Social Funds and Winning Workplaces need to do some more fact checking it seems. (It's too bad, since I was hoping to use Social Funds to help me find an enviromentally/socially conscious mutual fund, but now I have doubts as to whether they will be accurate.)

I will send my comments to Dancing Deer.

Coder-Photographer

2007-11-01T13:50:00.000-04:00

While my favorite (pseudo) warrior-poet is Stephen Colbert, (as he currently describes himself in his show's opening title sequence) my favorite coder-photographer is probably Lennart Poettering. In the first category, he made PulseAudio, an awesome open source sound system which allows you to (among other things) combine sound cards and send audio across computers. In the second category, he has taken some incredible panoramas and shares a list of tips for making them in hugin. Kudos!

Free the Phones

2007-10-31T09:49:00.000-04:00

This article, Free My Phone, does a good job of explaining many of the things that are wrong in the telecommunications world. I hope that Google or (much less likely, unfortunately) OpenMoko can break things open (I intend to buy an OpenMoko phone in a year or two, provided they have reasonable stability). Also, the problem is slightly worse than he describes for Sprint -- they couldn't even transfer numbers from my old phone to the new phone, let alone the rest of my data. Also, they're responsible for the br0x0red Bluetooth implementation which prevents my phone from synchronizing contact information (or anything else) with my computer.

Gmail mobile app 1.5

2007-10-21T15:15:00.000-04:00

I just deleted Gmail mobile 1.5 from my cell phone, keeping version 1.1.1. The new version (1.5) is way slower, as mentioned here. Startup and shutdown times are noticeably longer. Two possible factors:

The file was about 3x larger and might take longer to load into memory (though I don't really know much about the memory hierarchy of phones, so this may be bogus). The new version does have a bunch of new features (draft saving, etc.) so the new bloat might be warranted.
When starting up the new version, it displayed a list of emails immediately. The old version displayed an empty list and fetched the emails, so it looks like the new version might have cached emails locally. This might explain the slow startup and shutdown times. However, considering that usually there is at least one new email when I check Gmail from my phone, caching the titles of emails from last run is not really a savings.

The weirdest thing is that Google claims here:

New! Our new Gmail version is even faster and uses less data than before.

So maybe it's just my/some phones?

Don't panic: Part 2 (Panic)

2007-10-18T13:49:00.000-04:00

Remember this link on Five things that are worse than Global Warming?

Meet #3: Drought-Stricken South Facing Tough Choices [NYTimes]

Forgetting something?

2007-10-11T16:44:00.000-04:00

Every once in a while, I see some totally ridiculous spam headlines. Here's my current favorite:

Subj: LET:account,password,shop,did you forget?,are you forget?,why are are forget?,damn you forget}

Damn you, "forget" indeed. If you have any idea what these things could possibly mean or how they originated, I might even buy some \/!@gRA from you.

Recommended viewing: Daily Show 10.2.2007

2007-10-08T23:47:00.000-04:00

Another grillfest, this time with Hardball's Chris Matthews. Matthews was there to discuss his book, "Life's a Campaign," but Jon's opinion of the book and its philosophy is anything but positive. A transcript can be found here and here are two other takes.

How we saved the world from Thrash Cakes, part 1

2007-10-04T14:05:00.000-04:00

It went something like this:

Ryan: This Wikipedia article on pancakes "may contain original research"
Me: I like pancakes, what's their pancake research?
Ryan: Well, that depends on which type of pancake you want.
Me: What are my choices?
Ryan: Well, there's American, Canadian, Vermont, Hotcakes, griddlecakes, flapjacks, drop scones, Scotch pancakes, pikelets, ...
Me: Wait, go back one!
Ryan: Also, it says that "[i]n Santa Rosa or anywhere near the San Fransisco Bay Area they are known as "Thrash Cakes" named after the musical genre, which is popular in the region.^{[citation needed]}"
Me: That can't be right.

Cold(er) showers

2007-09-29T16:22:00.000-04:00

In theory, water usage in the shower should be proportional to shower length times pressure. Energy usage is proportional to shower length times pressure times temperature. I'd like to decrease both.

Back when I was in Grassroots at University of Rochester, people were talking about taking colder showers. As someone who likes warm-to-hot showers, this seemed difficult-to-insane. Indeed, I still can't take a cold shower. However, what I have been trying over the last month or so is to take colder showers. This has the nice secondary effect of making me take shorter showers (since the colder water reminds me not to stay there forever), thus using less water and energy.

My trick has been to gradually decrease the temperature during the course of the shower. Over time, I've been able to lower the starting point. Note that the water is actually still somewhat warm, so if I start feeling cold, I can move out of the water and then back in.

We'll see if it changes my apartment's gas bill (though there are other factors, so it's hard to measure). We'll also see if I can maintain this through colder room temperatures.

Get supported, customers

2007-09-28T10:32:00.000-04:00

Recently, I called Southwest's customer support and was surprisingly greeted within about 20 seconds by a real human. Even stranger, when we determined that Southwest couldn't fly where I wanted for a reasonable rate, the customer service rep actually referred me to other airlines which fly the same route. As far as I know, Southwest doesn't partner with any of them, so this appears to just be good customer-focused support.

However, most customer support systems are a nightmare (I'm looking at you Sprint and COX Communications!). Today, I found two tools which might make getting support suck slightly less.

Both tools help with the problem that many companies try to do everything over the Internet now and hide their customer support numbers. (This is especially amusing/frustrating when the company itself is an internet service provider, though I know that Netflix hid their CSR number at one point.)

GetHuman gives you numbers and instructions for how to talk to a human immediately. They also rate companies according to their standards.
Bringo takes it a step further. They claim to call these numbers for you and navigate the phone tree for you. Once they reach a human, they will call your phone and connect you.

P.S. While I'm talking about good/bad customer support, I should say that HP was very helpful when I was buying my laptop from them. I don't know if their technical support is as good as their sales as the laptop has been problem free so far.

Free games!

2007-09-19T22:36:00.000-04:00

Davinci Games, makers of the great card game, Bang!, have released some free games which could be cool. All of the free games include printable manuals and game materials.

In related news, their website reveals that there's a 2nd edition of the Dodge City extension pack which weakens three of the characters. The three characters were found to be too powerful in tournaments (details here).

Some thoughts on objectivity and journalism

2007-09-07T23:40:00.000-04:00

I skimmed an article describing Bush's recent report of our "progress" in Iraq. The article mentioned casually how this was Bush's 3rd time to Iraq since the war started. Now, I could be interpreting this incorrectly, but I'm pretty sure the journalist included this fact to emphasize the relative smallness of this number.

The reason I mention this is that it made me think about how even the act of including this fact imparts a political bias. Thus, even a seemingly basic task as fact selection is not objective. I'm sure this was obvious to many, but I hadn't thought about it before. I brought this up with my roommate, Allison, and we talked about how given space/time constraints, fact selection must take place. However, as more facts are included, the bias should be reduced. She made the point that 24-hour cable news channels have more time to fully investigate stories and include facts, making it all the much more sad when they don't.

For further information: The Daily Show rails on cable news at least weekly and Fox News has their own documentary, Outfoxed. The latter is interesting in that while it uses many of the techniques designed to influence the viewer (music and graphics to affect viewer's emotional state) and the documentary makers are obviously biased, they make a strong point by simply showing that Fox News is not "Fair and Balanced" as it claims to be.

Don't panic!

2007-09-04T21:53:00.000-04:00

...or do: Five things that are worse than Global Warming is quite scary. Even if you don't believe in all five of the problems they describe, (not to say that I don't) if even one of them is real, we're probably in serious trouble. Some, like the water shortage, are getting significantly less attention and potentially much harder to solve.

Recommended viewing: Daily Show 7.25.2007 (belated)

2007-08-26T18:35:00.000-04:00

While more than a month old, I still enjoy this clip from the 8.25.2007 episode of the Daily Show. The clip shows Senate judiciary committee's questioning of the unquestionable Alberto Gonzales. The article linked to is essentially a transcript, so just watch the clip.

Update (8.27.2007): Gonzales is resigning, which I did not know at the time of posting. If this isn't positive reinforcement for me starting a blog, I'm not sure what is.

Update 2 (9.1.2007): Oops, the show was 7.25.2007, not 8.25.2007

Scourge of my wallet

2007-08-25T10:53:00.001-04:00

Cash receipts for simple purchases (non-restaurant or supermarket) are a pet peeve of mine (also, the phrase "pet peeve," but that's another post, I guess). I think comedian Mitch Hedberg says it best:

I bought a donut and the guy gave me a receipt for the donut. I don't need a receipt for the donut. I give you the money, you give me the donut -- end of transaction. We do not need to bring ink and paper into this. I can not imagine the scenario where I would have to prove that I brought a donut. Some skeptical friend. Don't even act like I didn't get that donut. I got the documentation right here.

To save paper, we really should have a no-receipts-for-cash-purchases policy (unless, of course, you ask for one). I wonder how much paper/trees/energy/etc. could be saved if we didn't have these things. I also wonder why many places will give you a free x if you don't get a receipt with a purchase -- there must be some legal precedent for this or something.

Springy light bulbs

2007-08-23T23:58:00.000-04:00

Living with CFLs is a neat guide to those of us thinking about switching to CFLs (compact fluorescent lights) and interested in learning more about them. I am about to buy a bunch of CFLs of varying wattage to replace some of the lamps in my apartment. Sadly, I'm told the dimmable CFLs are very expensive and not worth it, so the study will remain incandescent.

Switch to green electricity

2007-08-22T01:58:00.001-04:00

One of my problems with Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth is that it didn't focus enough on possible solutions (some suggestions are given during the credits while people are leaving the theater). One of those suggestions is to switch your electricity to renewable sources. If you live in a blue state, this is likely an option. According to some rough figures, the average American produces about about 19,000 kg carbon yearly. If we assume that the average energy usage is 500 kilowatt hours/month, this turns out to be about 3,636 kg carbon yearly, or about 20% of the average American's footprint. At a small premium (about 10-15%), my apartment's electricity comes from renewable sources and hopefully helps grow the renewable energy market to make it more affordable. This is a very easy and fairly cheap way to lower your carbon footprint, though I haven't checked to see if it is actually the most affordable or best footprint-decreasing-value.

See GreenUp if you use National Grid in New England (MA, RI) for more information. If you're curious, my GreenUp provider is Community Energy with 50% wind, 50% "small" hydro.

Six Flags: Brought to you by...

2007-08-20T01:55:00.000-04:00

I recently visited Six Flags New England and was surprised to see the level of sponsorship: rides by Home Depot, napkins by Heinz (the usual condiments too), partnerships with D.C. comics and Looney Toons, and food by fast food chains (Papa John's, Panda Express, and others). If I remember correctly, I did not see nearly as much sponsorship when I went to Six Flags Darien Lake in 2004.

And another thing: What's with the ultra-greasy food at these theme parks? Seems like they're just asking for trouble and there's no way I'm the first one to point out this. As someone with a stomach that doesn't process fast food well, I wish there had been something light and not in danger of reversing its digestive course on the next ride. Ok, so there wasn't any real danger of that...or was there? [eerie music] But seriously...please serve at least one healthy thing.

Recommended viewing: Daily Show 8.15.2007

2007-08-19T10:27:00.000-04:00

On 8.15.2007, Jon Stewart was on fire (or perhaps plasma or even the state after that). The episode has two important bits that I've posted in other fashions.

First, meet 1994 Cheney who explains why invading Iraq would be a mistake and predicts with alarming accuracy many of our current problems.

Then see Jon Stewart's grillfest (ranterview?) with Stephen Hayes, Cheney's biographer. For those of you who don't watch the Daily Show, he is clearly much more upset than normal. While he doesn't give Hayes much time to respond to his questions, he doesn't like the answers that he does get. It seems at points as if he sees Hayes as standing in for Cheney/Bush administration:

Stewart: Then stop making the rest of us feel like idiots when we question their strategy in the war on terror, and stop making the rest of us feel like — and I don't mean you, I mean them — [...]

I'm really glad to see interviews like this, despite somewhat misdirected outrage. I hope the segment doesn't prevent him from getting guests like Hayes in the future.

Some puzzles

2007-08-17T22:44:00.000-04:00

My officemates and I have been doing a lot of Tangrams lately, but recently we discovered a bunch of cell-based puzzles (including the super popular Sudoku). Nurikabe is an interesting one. The 5x5s get easy after a couple of rounds, so try the 9x9s after that.