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Welcome to Orcmid's Lair, the playground for family connections, pastimes, and scholarly vocation -- the collected professional and recreational work of Dennis E. Hamilton
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2009-06-14The Fate of Microsoft Outlier CustomersTechnorati Tags: Microsoft, Encarta, OneCare, Money, software longevity, trustworthiness, Maps, Works, MSN I recently noticed that three of my favorite Microsoft products are to be no more: Windows OneCare (why are they still selling it?) , Microsoft Encarta, and Microsoft Money. That was striking for me and I have created a contingency plan for each of those products. On reflection, it is not a new thing for various Microsoft applications to transmogrify and eventually disappear. Although I have never had an interest in Flight Simulator, I am still a devoted user of Microsoft FrontPage. If Microsoft Works were as clean and simple as the MS-DOS version, I would still use it. I have also used a variety of picture editors and photo editors that were bundled in various Microsoft products and that seem to come and go with each new computer system and occasional Microsoft Office upgrade. Some day, I suppose I will have to do without Windows Live Photo Gallery and Windows Movie Maker, especially as future versions/replacements demand hardware capabilities I don’t possess. Now, Microsoft is not making a fortune for me as an occasional upgrader of these products (though I quietly paid my OneCare subscription renewal each year). It is interesting that not until the abandonment of FrontPage was announced did I begin to feel the squeeze and the lack of an appropriate replacement for abandoned Microsoft products. (E.g., Expression Web is both more and less than what suits my current web-development practices.) Now I now need to look for three more substitutions and also look at long-term measures for protecting my systems and my electronic financial records as well as maintaining my web sites. For the three latest-discontinued products, I find that I have three different contingency measures in place. Wait, I Like EncartaWhen I read that Encarta was to be no more, I resolved to go find a copy of the latest version. I have a version completely installed on my hard drive and it is a handy reference. I confess that I mainly use the dictionary (the default setting for the Encarta Search Bar kept handy in my Windows XP task bar). The encyclopedia is handy but it doesn’t get searched by Windows Desktop Search (a little incoherence there) and I find myself on the web (and Wikipedia) more often than in Encarta because that’s where Windows Desktop Search (and now bing) lead me best. I’m currently running version 14 (Encarta 2005) and I actually had one monthly update that I didn’t install until last week. The reluctance to update has to do with needing to be administrator when I do it, and I usually forget Encarta updates when I am running as administrator for other maintenance purposes. It is a demonstration of my unnoticed waning interest that I didn’t know I had one update left from 2005. Nevertheless, I wanted to have the latest and greatest if there were to be no more. Unfortunately, the latest version seems to be Encarta Premium 2007 and it is still pricey, even though pro-rated refunds were cut off on April 30. I settled for the less-expensive Britannica 2009 Deluxe with the hope that the included dictionary and thesaurus is as easy to use as the one I am abandoning from Encarta. Not Money Too. No, Not Money!The shocker for me is last week’s announcement that Microsoft Money will also be no more. I checked, and my oldest Microsoft Money backup is dated 1999 and it has entries from 1998-01-01. I tended to hold onto versions of Microsoft Money. I didn’t switch to Money Plus 2007 until the version I was running under Windows 98 couldn’t be installed on Windows XP as I was off-loading the Windows 98 machine at the end of 2007. I don’t like Money Plus 2007 as much as the older pure-desktop versions. The change of the user experience to one with integrated web features is mostly a nuisance. The software performs more slowly and I don’t do those on-line things. But I like the reports and the extensive history of purchases (and depreciation records) is important for me. I prepare my tax returns from records maintained in Microsoft Money, and I have had some success balancing my bank accounts using downloads that Money will rely on. (The experience is rather variable and I often simply balance statements manually instead rather than deal with what it takes to correct for a failed automatic account update.) I discovered that my version of Money Plus “expires” It seems like a no-brainer that what I want to do is install another downloaded version and continue to use it until I have a satisfactory replacement. I will also want to keep a copy around as long as possible to enable my use of existing records. I will need to discover how to export some of those for use in other products, or as spreadsheets that I can preserve in OOXML/ODF. So I have another Money Plus Home and Business download and a product key for it. I will install it at a point this summer when I am carefully backed up, exported, and ready to risk an upgrade. Goodbye OneCare, It’s Been Good to Know YeMicrosoft OneCare arrived at just the right time for me. I had tired of Norton Antivirus upgrades and a growing drift from what worked just right for me starting before Norton/Symantec Systemworks and going back to a time when there really were Norton Utilities. I valued the simplicity all-in-oneness of OneCare for the following provisions:
It wasn’t the most wonderful product, but it was also steadily improved over the time I used it, right from the beginning of its availability. It did deal with my dominant computer security concerns. OneCare also provided me with a great source of system-incoherence anecdotes, and I must recount some of those while I can still capture screen shots of the experience. Actually doing backups onto DVDs was not the most exciting experience, as much as OneCare made that possible. Once backup functions were taken over by WHS, the cleverly-named HP Mediasmart Server (with its Windows Home Server version of Windows Server 2003) now on the network, that difficulty was mitigated and there are now automatic, incremental backups every night. Still, OneCare works well and effortlessly for us, even if it reports that backups are woefully out of date (a new little incoherence on how OneCare has forgotten WHS is on the job). It was also great that Microsoft announced that all OneCare support agreements will continue until their expiration. That means mid-September 2009 here. On the other hand, the promised Microsoft replacements for OneCare are not in sight. I believe the last promise was for around August. I am beginning to squirm. There appears time to find an adequate substitute, taking into consideration that Microsoft will offer some sort of solutions for some unknown degree of protection where I find it the most valuable for the computers here. Unfortunately, it is not clear that there is a decent non-Microsoft product that works here, regardless of the high reputation a number of Antivirus producers have achieved. The low reputation that is Microsoft’s automatic prize is apparently more myth than reality in my experience. On balance, OneCare works better than anything I have attempted to replace it with. Here’s how my search is working out so far. Since OneCare is to be no more, Windows 7 beta and Windows 7 RC not only had no provision for it, those releases were actually hostile to OneCare. So on Quadro7 I have been going through trials of other Antivirus products, partly to determine a good candidate to be installed uniformly on all of the systems here. None of the products tried so far seem to integrate well with Windows 7, which has apparently changed the rules enough that AV producers are having some difficulty. In particular, I have not found an AV product (even the Windows 7 directed beta releases) where Windows 7 reports that it is protected and the Windows Home Server concurs in reporting that my systems are protected. Having tired of Symantec (and enjoying the liberation that OneCare provided), I haven’t gone back. My latest experience with McAfee was on WHS and that led me to prefer no AV there instead. (That experience also led me to be more cautious about the judgment of folks at Hewlett-Packard and the trial installations they chose to push to WHS.) Meanwhile, on Quadro 7 I have gone through one trial of Kapersky and another of Trend Micro. I actually bought a retail copy of Trend Micro but Windows 7 chokes on that. Instead, I now possess an useless license since the Trend Micro beta for Windows 7 won’t accept the older-product registration code except when it installs as an update, and that doesn’t work on Windows 7. I’m moving on to F-Secure’s beta for Windows 7 right now and the trial lasts out past August. With luck, I might have a consistent Microsoft solution to deploy across all of the computers here. And if not, I will need to find a product that has an affordable multiple-machine license (as Trend does) and that doesn’t require me to use a web site to know my status (as McAfee Total Protection does). There are clearly interoperability issues here, and the level of coherent integration is a challenge. It is a challenge for Microsoft too, but as one might expect, OneCare integrates more cleanly and, apart from an apparently-inescapable level of Microsoft paternalism, works most consistently and coherently than anything else I have attempted to use in its place. Update 2009-06-15-04:06Z Correcting an expiration date for Microsoft Money. Labels: computers and internet, Golden Geek, software usability, system incoherence, trustworthiness
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2009-06-13Just a Little Bit FacebookedTechnorati Tags: Facebook, social computing, social grid, social silos, orcmid, internet surveillance, privacy
When I said “I will Facebook no more Forever” in December 2007, I meant it. I really meant it. On the other hand, I knew that Facebook actually maintained my account and all I needed to do was log back into it to have it operating again. There is evidently a full nuclear destruction available, but I didn’t go that option. I also didn’t discard my Facebook account password. I recall being given a similar reassurance by an AOL telephone representative as I was cancelling my long-standing CompuServe account, the first place “orcmid” was ever seen in public. (The AOL-ized webified CompuServe was not the CompuServe that I devoted so much time to at the end of the 70s. It seems I am constantly ending up in the demographic that is no longer the one of a long-time vendor’s keen interest.) At 10:00 this morning, I was noticing all of the folks on Twitter going on about having gotten their user-friendly Facebook name, or about someone else getting it first. Oh oh, “What about Orcmid?” I say to myself at least ten hours after the name-claiming frenzy began. Well of course “orcmid” was available. I now have it. I am not back on Facebook. Yes, my account is active again, but I am not back. All this means is that when others talk about their Facebook page, or photos on Facebook, or anything-else Facebook, I can go look, because I have an account. I am not attending to my Facebook page, I am not posting on folk’s walls, I am not friending anyone and I am ignoring mail that comes in saying so-and-so has friended me. This is entirely an account of convenience. I am only a little bit Facebooked. Honest. I caught it from a toilet seat. Labels: Golden Geek, social networking 2009-06-12By Your Start Bars Shall Ye Be KnownWouter van Vugt and Jesper Lund Stocholm have unwittingly (?) started a new geek Friday pastime: Comparing computer Start Bars (or their equivalent among non-Windows users). Well, let’s see how many personality revelations I make here:
Senator, I have to the best of my recollection never opened Getting Started, Calculator, Sticky Notes, Snipping Tool, and Paint on Windows 7. That must have been someone else. (This must show how little my start bar has been auto-customized yet, and I have been using other applications. Hmm, gremlins perhaps?) Now, the Start Bar is not the whole story. As you can see, what I might or might not have arranged in my Quick Launch area of the Task Bar is also revealing. And, if you don’t find enough tea leaves to read into my psychological profile from the above clips, there is always the system tray for delving deep into the geek psyche:
Well, that was boring. What can we come up with next week I wonder? Labels: Golden Geek 2009-05-30Golden Geek: Sibling Memories Revisited
In the 2009-02-02 post, Golden Geek: Sibling Memories, I suggested that the next time the three of us got together, we should restage the 1951 group portrait. Luckily, youngest sister Carol is vacationing in the Pacific Northwest this year. On May 23, we all met at Judy’s and recreated the photograph as we are now, 58 years later. Vicki, our superb photographer assistant, made it possible. Here we are in the same order: Carol, Dennis, and Judy. Carol is now taller than Judy and this is apparently a matter of sibling banter between the two of them. Carol and Judy provided additional recollections on the original staging. It was dad who arranged for us to sit for this picture. We think it was around Spring 1951, when we were in the 2nd, 4th, and 6th grades, all in Horace Mann school in Tacoma, Washington. This was the last time that all three of us would be in the same school together. The photo portrait was hand retouched, and that is evident on the black-and-white print I am holding. The version that was presented to mom, and hung prominently in our home, was hand-colored. Carol remembers that dad did not like obligatory occasions and preferred to operate spontaneously. We think the portrait was a surprise gift not associated with any particular occasion. I recall being that way as well. Living in New York State and Pennsylvania, I would arrive for holiday visits unannounced, meeting dad at his work and then riding home with him. The only problem with that is mom knew I might do such a thing and was left in anticipation whether I was coming or not. When dad warned me about that, I made my intentions known in advance from then on. I also learned to shop for occasions, even in advance rather than immediately before, after observing an acquaintance do that and seeing how much enjoyment she got out of it. I don’t resist an opportunity for a good surprise, but these days the simpler pleasures are available more consistently. Concerning photo-realism, I believe that I was already wearing glasses in 1951. However, I was near-sighted and often did not wear glasses indoors. (That was true until around 1980 when I needed my first bifocals.) These days, we all wear glasses and some of us cannot see very far in front of our face without them. Labels: friends and family, Golden Geek 2009-05-03Saturday Geek Photo: A Back-to-the-Future Moment
When I happened to glance into this window of the neighborhood computer store, I had a sudden back-to-the-future moment. I had to check my surroundings to ensure that I hadn’t step through a time warp. I don’t have any explanation for this being here, and I didn’t step inside to ask. I did have my camera along. As I look around me today, it is difficult to recall how exciting these machines and their brethren were for us. Despite their considerable limitations, they inspired the imagination in ways that won’t occur in that way again. The original Commodore Business Machine (CBM) was an all-in-one unit that resembled some sort of Aztec pyramid with its monitor on top. I remember checking them out around 1977. I was concerned enough about the cost of service and maintenance for those and similar units that I spent the months before my first microcomputer going through the Heathkit courses on DC and AC Electronics while building my own instruments, starting with a multi-meter and culminating with an oscilloscope. Having done that, I ordered my first H8 computer and rapidly assembled that, the matching floppy-disk units, the H19 terminal, and then an H89 all-in-one computer, starting in 1978. Although I was a Z80 Assembler and CP/M-80 hold-out, the microcomputer era ended for me when I purchased an assembled Heath-Zenith Z158 PC XT clone. Although the Z158 sported the original MS-DOS 64k RAM and Intel 8088 processor, I recall adding a memory-expansion board, additional hard disk (on an add-in board), and Microsoft Windows 1.03. I managed to keep Windows on it all the way through 3.0. My use of Windows was primarily as a shell for the basic Windows utilities and MS-DOS programs, including Microsoft Works, and Turbo Pascal. Nothing stressed Windows much and the result was tolerable performance on my underpowered system. I had an early version of the Windows SDK as well. My favorite text editor was the Microsoft Editor that was packaged with Microsoft development tools at that time. I wasn’t particularly thrilled with the command-line C compiler, having far more affection for Borland’s Turbo C and, later, Turbo C++. And, in a side room, there was also an Atari 800. Although the 8-bit Atari was kept mainly as a recreational machine with limited floppy-disk capacity, I was inspired to publish an article on fractal dragon curves [Compute! October 1986, pp. 78-89] that exploited the relationship of dragon curve-walking to carry propagation in a binary counter. Labels: Golden Geek 2009-03-242009-03-24: Finding Ada
Months ago, I pledged to write something in honor of Finding Ada and post about it when today arrived. I now have three thoughts about this, and I need to figure out where to start.
Linda Bergsteinsson: Pioneering Woman in TechnologyI first met Linda in 1989 when she visited the Xerox advanced-development team I was a member of in Rochester, New York. She’d flown in from the California-based Xerox Office Systems business unit, home of Ethernet, the Xerox work stations, and publishing-system software. Linda was taking on a crash project for development of a document-imaging system. The product was required to work with the soon-to-be-announced Xerox Docutech system and it was required to be demonstrable at the launch event. I joined her new team. Not prepared to move to California, I remained in Rochester as part of a satellite operation. I commuted to El Segundo and Palo Alto until the project and its staff were scooped up under a Rochester-based organization. I lost touch with Linda until the Spring of 1992 when, knowing that I was finally looking for a way to move to California, she informed me of an urgent need for a software architect on XSoft document-management products. I arrived in Silicon Valley in August 1992. Although I didn’t work with Linda again, we remained colleagues and friends until neither of us were in Silicon Valley any longer. I learned, as part of our acquaintance, that Linda and I were the same age. She graduated from UCLA in 1960 as a mechanical engineer, a very unusual choice at that time. She had worked in Germany and at Ford Aeronutronics. She was solidly into computers on joining Planning Research Corporation, in Los Angeles, around the same time in the 60s when they were contracting support to some Univac software in arrangements I was tangentially on the far end of. At Xerox, she was involved in the original Xerox Workstation software effort and was working at the descendant of that PARC-associated organization when our paths finally crossed. Although I would learn of her history as our acquaintance grew, there was something pronounced that I learned from Linda early on. She just accepted people. And she liked people that I had quite different snap-judgments about. Struck by her generosity, I began to question and revise my existing snap impressions of the same people. She seemed to have a decisive practical nature, and the usual changes of organizations and directions did not distress her so much that it showed. When she was deposed as part of the document-imaging team being scooped up by another organization, what seemed most unsettling for her was that the principle actors in that play were personally mean about it. When I later introduced Vicki to Linda, Vicki’s experience was of immediate acceptance and of interest in what was important to Vicki. Although her career was in technology, Linda also managed a Palo Alto home that always had housemates or visitors. She collected and displayed art all over her home. She loved to cook and held wonderful dinners. I had the opportunity to meet members of her family in town for a little reunion at her home. Her relatives were struck by the fact that I had worked for and with Linda. They would confide to me how much they were still somewhat mystified by Linda’s connection to engineering and technology and her taking what seemed such an alien path through life. As the XSoft organization dwindled and shed senior management team, Linda retired from Xerox Corporation a few years before I did. Too young to fully retire, I remember how pleased she was to obtain her own PC at home and train herself to work on the Internet. Freed from management responsibilities and the concerns of senior staff, she found work as a web developer for a local firm. It was one of the most satisfying experiences she’d had in a long time. In January 2001, Linda moved from her Palo Alto home to Southern California. On February 10 she married Tom Criswell, a long-time friend and companion. They were preparing to move together into a home in Rancho Palos Verdes. On Tuesday, August 27, 2002, Linda Bergsteinsson Criswell died of cancer. She was 63. It was a gift to know her. Looking back, I see all the ways that I didn’t know her very well. And, today, I miss her and her calm steadiness. Labels: Golden Geek 2009-03-07Golden Geek: Picture PersonalityStephen Peront came across this wonderful timewaster project to derive picture personalities. This is mine.
There are twelve questions that one must answer and then use Flickr search to find a chosen image for incorporation in a mosaic. Here are my questions and responses:
The Credits:
Labels: Golden Geek 2009-02-02Golden Geek: Sibling Memories
Having passed my 70th birthday, I was reminded of this photograph by the birthday cards I received from my sister Carol (left, above) and my sister Judy (right, above). I don’t recall this photograph being taken, although a large version was prominently displayed near the front room of our family home in Tacoma, Washington. It is touching to think how I and my two sisters stay connected after all of this time. I am the oldest, with Judy just over two years younger, followed by Carol at a little over two more years. (My birthday is first each year, followed by Judy in the Spring, Carol in the Autumn). As youngsters, the three of us spent a lot of time together, especially on those rainy Northwest days when we weren’t in school. We also followed through the same school systems. Once I moved from 6th grade at Horace Mann School to Stewart Junior High School, Judy and I would be in the same school only once out of every three years. Carol and I were never in school together once I entered the 7th grade. After high school, I went off to college in Pasadena for a short time, then moving to Seattle. Shortly after Carol graduated from Lincoln High School in Both Judy and Carol attended Washington State University. Judy returned to teach school. Carol married and moved to Minnesota, where she remains near her two daughters and her grandchildren. A few years ago Carol obtained a masters degree and began working in special programs for youngsters and young mothers. The three of us have our separate lives. Although Judy and I are nearby, we each have our own connections and activities, and we treasure the times we get to spend together. It is a special treat when Carol is visiting out this way and we can connect in person. Carol and Judy are more connected, often finding vacations and trips to take together. The next time the three of us are together, we should restage this photograph. All of this reminiscence is triggered by my birthday cards. They remind me that as much as we have traveled quite different roads, our childhood connections hold on. It also shows me how much I can be reminded of shared experiences that I have forgotten and that were memorable for my sisters. It is one of those benefits of growing up family that we remember for each other. I am thankful that our growing into adult friends is not marked by the turmoil and separation that I’ve seen in the families of others. From Carol:
From Judy:
It is wonderful to be able to look back and learn what was the best of it for each of us. Labels: friends and family, Golden Geek 2009-01-23Friday: My First Cat Photo
I am not sure what appealed to me about the cat, but there is some residual fondness when I look at the photograph. I have similar affection for our oldest Bombay, Askani. I date the picture to around 1954. It was taken with a borrowed Kodak Pony 35 or possibly my original Praktiflex FX. If it was a slide, it was probably on Anscochrome. I thought that the print I had was from a slide, but I can’t find it. This image is recovered from a Kodacolor print that has experienced considerable deterioration. Using an H-P Scanjet, I scanned the print into a full-color 600spi TIFF file with cropping (to 2” by 3”) and preservation of all the range I could find. The final corrections were made with Nikon Capture NX 2 where I could work on brightness, contrast, range, and correction to the neutral points in the image. I should do this with other images where I only have prints before their color deteriorates further. Labels: cats, Golden Geek, photography 2009-01-22Golden Geek: Going for Platinum
In May, 1958, I was already 19 years old. By the next Golden Geek anniversary I will be a septuagenarian, someone in the 8th decade of their life, after turning 70 this week. This is an exciting occasion and probably the most exciting birthday I can remember (assuming that as a youngster there was considerable now-forgotten excitement too). In honor of that I am taking the next few days to indulge some simple pleasures, watch a movie on the IMAX screen, visit an art museum, and write about some of my favorite but neglected topics. Before I do that, I want to reflect on what I notice, looking back from this week. If I had a troublesome year, it was after my 39th birthday. By my 40th I had calmed down and I recall being excited and oddly moved on the eve of that birthday. Intervening birthdays were not that distinctive as attainments of an age except for the 65th, spent dining in a marvelous sidewalk dining room on the Via Venito in Rome. The age itself didn’t strike me as particularly special, unless you count little blessing such as eligibility for Medicare. I do count little blessings. I am pleased and satisfied with small pleasures at this stage of my life. I can worry about outliving our savings, being incapacitated in some way, and the new little physical and stamina limitations that show up from time to time. Yet, on balance, life is satisfying. I feel settled. And then there is the constancy of my vocation as a computer and software technologist, my interest in the computing sciences, and the never-ending fascination with computing as a personal activity. I have had ups and downs in my enthusiasm, yet I find that the current period is one of excitement and accomplishment. Today I am charting for myself some future anniversaries:
Around Platinum time, I will become a nonagenarian and I do suspect my capacities and interests will have been exhausted as far as computing goes. I relish the idea of becoming a centenarian, but I think I will just keep the Platinum Geek title, emeritus. Speaking of ups-and-downs, there was no little source of excitement at the front of my birthday week thanks to the inauguration of the 44th President of the United States on January 20. I think this has been the most exciting and engaging election campaign and inauguration of my life. That had me look back at all of the presidential campaigns that I remember, preceding my first eligibility to vote in one, 1960, at the then-minimum age of 21:
I have no idea what the future will bring. Every time I see a presidential motorcade or see President Obama in the open in public, I am apprehensive. We’ve been taught that by an accumulation of tragedies. Somehow the greatest fear is that our leader won’t be the real deal. Then as we begin to realize that we have been blessed by a powerful leader who speaks to the best in us, there is the fear that we will be denied the benefit of his full terms. I look forward to that apprehension being displaced by how we join together in continuing the story that is the promise of America. With all of the challenges that we face, I am hopeful. And I look forward to what the next years bring as I march on toward Platinum Geekness as far as I am permitted to proceed in this life. [update 2009-01-23T22:09Z: I forgot to put categories on this post. That gave me the excuse I need to correct some typos. I supposed when typos originate with the author, they should be writos? gaffos? slippos?] Labels: civil society and democracy, Golden Geek
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2009-01-01Golden Geek: The Compulsion to EditI was telling Vicki that I had received a couple of complementary tweets about my Growing Up Geek post. When I mentioned that I really wanted to go back and edit that post, the neighbors could have heard her laughter. She roared. I do want to fix it, yet I promised her I would simply cop to it but not do anything (just now, I said to myself). I am a rewriter and polisher. Sometimes that is valuable. Sometimes it is one of the ways that I am my own worst enemy in terms of accomplishment. I mostly don’t give myself a choice in the matter. I have also learned that what others consider good enough I often see as careless. My perfectionism does have an end to it, when things are good enough and I sense that it is completed work. It does end. And often, after having expressed something, I will see ways that it needs to be refined. I am not abashed about carrying that out in public, although I am now better at avoiding situations where I would upload some code followed by three revisions in the course of several minutes. I allow time for the after-thoughts, and I may save them up or record them somewhere. Like here. Here is what I see that I would repair, were I taking the time to edit the initial copy that I spewed out:
Doing it this way, I have found more than I first noticed after posting. I was already itching to repair that post, but this list is a better way of seeing what’s needed rather than a progression of code-and-fix updates. Interesting ... Labels: Golden Geek
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2008-12-31Golden Geek: Growing Up Geek
On 2008-10-04, Scott Hanselman kicked off “Meme Time: Growing Up Geek.” It is not clear that he got many takers, most comments proposing demerits for young Scott breaking the nerd code at the time. I took it to be a cool idea, and after gestating the heck out of it, I don’t have much more than I originally thought of. So there.
In 1954, between 9th and 10th grade, I had a moderately-illegal part-time job in a camera shop. It was also the first job I was ever fired from. This was also the time that my interest in photography kicked into high gear.
Since the left photograph of me is on a strip of negative that is mine, I suspect it was taken with a borrowed Kodak Pony 35, a basic 35mm camera with a fixed-mounting lens and some basic manual controls and crude focus ability (without a rangefinder). The shop owner let me use it until I managed to save up for my first 35mm single-lens-reflex camera. The photographer was probably Jerry Hanson. These cameras were completely manual and my reflex camera had a ground-glass image field that I had to look down into. It had a flip-out magnifier too. It is interesting that photography and printing were two of my fascinations. I remember how I and another guy would draw our own newspaper in the 3rd grade (and he had a chemistry set, which inspired considerable envy on my part). At one point, my father had found an old jack screw and some heavy boards, fashioning a flat-bed press for me. I put lead movable type into a little rack and I’d turn the row screws so tight that the line of type would blow up in the middle and explode out of the frame.
One thing that having a 35mm camera allowed was considerable practice at basement darkroom work. My photo buddy, Jerry Hanson, and I learned to buy bulk film and load our own film cartridges. My big game was to seriously underexpose Tri-X film and work at push-processing it. The fascination was with available-light photography, barely passable. My efforts at over-development and use of intensifiers to salvage images probably explains why most of my negatives from that time are fogged and barely usable. My father built my first darkroom enlarger. It used a large potato-chip can for the light housing, with a regular low-wattage frosted bulb. The base of the housing was cut out and held a piece of ground glass as a diffuser. beneath that, made with several layers of plywood, was a negative carrier with a wood slide. Beneath that, an old bellows camera was mounted for use as the lens and focus assembly. This arrangement was connected by a pipe fitting and wing-nut screw to a vertical pipe that was attached to the wooden base below the entire setup. It was actually serviceable, although vibration could ruin a print.
Around 1961 I acquired a Beseler 23C enlarger that I kept, mostly in storage, until putting it out in a Silicon Valley yard sale in 1998. It is surprising that I managed to work around my own darkroom. I was not much into manual activity, a deficiency that I did not remedy until 1978 when I finally taught myself enough electronics to assemble and check-out my own Heathkit H8, H89, and Z90 computers, terminals, and terminal computers. More typical, for me, was playing chess and collecting stamps. My stamp collecting started when my grandfather brought me some plate blocks and a small U.S. album. It was not long before I had the ambition to design my own comprehensive album that would have a place for every stamp in the Scott catalogs of the time. I learned a lot about Abyssinia (now officially Ethiopia) and Afghanistan almost did me in with the highly-repetitious early issues with their complex Arabic inscriptions. I gave up in the middle of Algeria. The pages were all hand-drawn. Now I could entertain such a project using a computer and document-generation software for producing custom (mini-) albums. I no longer have the interest.
It is perhaps unsurprising that postal chess had strong appeal for me. I began a series of collections of opening lines, dutifully adding them on pasted-in pages of my copy of Modern Chess Openings. Using little rubber stamps to make chess diagrams on the post cards having my moves was another great opportunity. For a time I combined my interest in chess and in publishing by writing the junior chess column for the Washington State Chess Letter. I also made illustrations. The approach to desktop publishing was to type on special master sheets consisting of a coated plastic film that the typewriter letters would penetrate enough for use as a mimeograph stencil. The illustrations were scribed by hand using a tool designed for that purpose. I abandoned chess in the mid-70s when I realized that it was too much like my work, rather than being a respite from work. I still muse about some ideas I have for a computer chess-playing framework.
Jerry and I spent hours drawing track layouts, understanding narrow-gauge operation used in Western logging railroads, and collecting photographs from the steam-locomotive graveyards near Tacoma. Jerry managed to make money selling rail photos. There was an overlap of interest with stamp collecting too, and there was a time when we decided to issue our own postal stamps and arrange for commemorative use, special cancellations and other fabrications. We were a two-man sand-dune philately operation.
I took all of the mathematics courses that were available in a pre-Sputnik public school, and we got a peek at calculus in the last algebra course. I took all of the chemistry, biology, and physics, ending up as the Bausch & Lomb science scholar in my graduating class. I didn’t end up at the University of Rochester, but fate would have me in Rochester for 20 years later in my career. I had no idea that I would attend college, although my high-school chemistry teacher and others encouraged me. I was so weird about it that I only applied to two colleges in my senior year: Caltech and MIT. I was stunned to be admitted to both, and I ended up at Caltech. Mr. sophisticated math guy is shown in this pose with pipe, room-mates drinking mug, and a slide-rule atop the papers on the desk. The clip-on bow tie adds a nice touch, don’t you think? Yes, we dressed for evening meals in those days. At Caltech I learned that I had no idea what I was doing there, wanting to understand all of it very badly without working hard. I dropped out after two quarter terms. It was all a mystery to me. And I saw someone actually creating a computer program in raw punch-out-the bits machine language. That I never forget. Labels: Golden Geek
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Give Blood: Get Cookies
I’m a regular blood donor. I made my sixth whole-blood donation of 2008 on December 26th. This afternoon, I was enjoying “vegetable pie” from the cook book that the local blood center created and gave to those of us who donated twice in the Summer of 2008. Right now, the local blood supply has dwindled because of the holidays, the poor weather, and the cancellation of many blood-mobile appointments because of travel difficulties and business snow days. Brad Wong provides an account of the local situation in his 2008-12-28 Seattle Post-Intelligencer article, “Donations urgently needed at blood center” (hat tips to Ron Sims and nephew Eric Walrod). There may be similar shortages in other areas of the country that have been experiencing extreme weather conditions atop an ordinary decrease attributable to school and work holidays. The Puget Sound Blood Center encourages donors to bring a buddy along. I didn’t think to do that. You can, if you’re eligible to donate. If you have never donated, you can be a buddy of a friend who donates. It’s important. I never donated until I was in my 50’s. I’d been squeamish and managed to avoid it until I moved to Silicon Valley in 1992 and learned of the regular bloodmobile visits at Xerox PARC. It probably helped that I had recently participated in the Landmark Forum when I nerved-up to volunteer in 1993. After learning that it didn’t hurt me at all, I became an occasional donor. After retirement in 1998 I began to visit the Stanford Medical Center blood-donation location on my own. One Wednesday there was a shortage of type-O blood according to the sign in front of the center. I knew I was an O-type but I asked the technician which one I was. She replied that I was O-positive (the second-most universally usable type) and also CNV-negative. I didn’t know what CNV was. She explained that CNV is a virus that many of us have in our blood streams to no particular adverse effect, with normal recipients perhaps having a brief case of the sniffles. But CNV is not good for recipients having suppressed immune systems. I thought of AIDS patients, but she added that this also applied to newborns, especially as there are now many more procedures for saving the lives of infants and where transfusions are needed. After learning that, why would I not donate? After moving to Seattle at the end of 1999, it took a while to find my way around to donation points. I’ve become quite consistent as an every-8-weeks whole-blood donor. I’m amazed that it remains easy to do and that, as I approach my 70th birthday, there is no age limit for blood donation. I’m grateful that I finally took this on, and that I can make a difference for someone, somewhere, by this routine that I’ve created in my life. Labels: Golden Geek 2008-12-30Retiring InfoNuovo.comI am retiring the InfoNuovo.com domain after 10 years. The domain will be cast loose at the beginning of February, 2009. Those places where there are still references to infonuovo.com need to be updated:
If you have an infonuovo.com bookmark and you are not sure of its replacement, simply use it and notice the URL of the destination that appears in the address bar of your browser. That is the URL that should be bookmarked. InfoNuovo.com was the first domain name that I ever rented. It was originally hosted on VServers and absorbed through acquisitions a couple of times. On March 22, 1999, I posted my first construction note on the use of InfoNuovo.com as an anchor site, a web site that houses other web sites as part of a single hosting. This was also the first step toward evolution of what I now call the construction structure of any nfoCentrale web site. InfoNuovo was the company name I had chosen for my independent consulting practice initiated on retirement from Xerox Corporation in December, 1998. When I moved from Silicon Valley to the Seattle Area in August, 1999, I found that InfoNuovo was too easily confused with a name already registered in Washington State. The business became NuovoDoc, but I continued to hold the infonuovo.com domain name for the support of the subwebs housed there. I eventually moved most content to the new anchor, nfoCentrale.net, on Microsoft bCentral. There was one problem. Although I could redirect unique domain names, such as ODMA.info, to the current anchor, the web pages still served up with the URLs of the actual location on the anchor site. I experimented with URL cloaking, but that created as many problems as it solved. In October 2006, following the lead of Ed Bott, I switched to A2 Hosting as a way to reduce the hosting fees and also take advantage of the A2 shared hosting Apache-server provisions for addon domains. Addon domains serve up with URLs of their domain even though the domain is anchored on a single hosted site (in this case, nfoCentrale.com). I consolidated all nfoCentrale.net and infonuovo.com content on nfoCentrale.com. I also parked domains nfoCentrale.net and infonuovo.com where they are today, atop nfoCentrale.com. Now, however, accessing any of the individual subwebs triggers redirection to the appropriate addon-domain URL. This took care of my wanting to have the subwebs always respond as the domains that I have as their addons. It also raised an unexpected problem around case-sensitivity of Apache filenames, a situation I am still digging my way out of. That shows how important having the addon-domain capability is to me. I’m not sure I’d have moved if I knew how difficult the case-sensitivity extrication would be though. I know that there are still infonuovo.com URLs out there, even though the addon domains have been in place for over two years. In another month, those URLs will fail. I just don’t want to lease infonuovo.com any longer. I do feel a little sentimental about it. That’s not going to stop me. Labels: Golden Geek, web site construction 2008-12-27GoldenGeek: Chasing those Open LoopsI’ve been lying awake since some time after 4 a.m. I think part of it was the aching little toe that I banged against some furniture last night (nice purple bruise there now). I thought a couple of Ibuprofen would help me get back to sleep, but I’m wide awake. It could be the five cups of coffee I had yesterday, breaking my current 2-cups-daily regimen. Although after donating whole blood yesterday, resting should be easy. No, it’s those darned open loops. I started a new attack on raising my personal productivity (and trustworthiness to go with it) yesterday, and now I’m lying awake running open loops through my head about getting rid of my open loops. So I drag myself out of bed at 05:50, make coffee, fire up the computer, and look at what I can do to get those loops out of my head: First I’m thinking about the questions I have about some key proposals for ODF 1.2 at the OASIS TC: digital signatures and what’s the profile for how XML DSig is applied? How is the RDF metadata supposed to work and who is it for? What does it mean to have two ways to lock a table cell? Then there’s wanting to do a belated Friday Cat Picture, upload the photographs of my office as part of my Total Relaxed Organization (TRO) online lesson, capturing some notes on how real-time community journals are inverting the entire news-publishing pyramid, more notes on Seattle weather, organize photos from Mindcamp 5.0 that are relevant to topics I want to blog about, and finally being able to start something on the connection between confirmable experience and system incoherence. Oh, and now some other commitments come to mind, including putting Vicki’s new Kiln Sitter’s Digest blog into shape, prepare backups, and continue customizing the blog for her. I need to do something more pro-active about those loops than blogging about it. I’ve been noodling around checking mail, updating my RSS feeds (for review someday soon), and scanning my twhirl Twitter and FriendFeed streams for items of interest. Well, now it’s 7:30 am and the cats don’t understand why having the lights on in our shared space doesn’t mean breakfast is ready. All right, I don’t need an open loop for that. The cats are seeing to it. Time to feed them now. Then I’ll sit down and get organized. A little. More. Labels: Golden Geek, productivity, trustworthiness |
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Excluding Vicki’s office desktop system, there is still one more machine in the Centrale workgroup. The fact that I actually had to learn how to use Remote Desktop reveals how much my arrangement is a maverick with respect to Windows Home Server design assumptions. I didn’t want to be a network systems administrator, but now I am one. 
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