On today’s news, there was a story about Hillary Clinton’s multiple recounts of her trip to Bosnia when she was under sniper fire. After that was proven to be false, she said she misspoke. There are certain things in your life that you’re unlikely to forget; I’d think that getting shot at would definitely be one of them. Can we actually believe anything else she has said?
DisplayLink First Impressions
Today I received a Sewell Direct USB to DVI adapter which uses the DisplayLink technology. The other day my father received his new iMac and said that I could have my 20″ flat panel display back that he had hooked up to his Windows box. At the same time I saw that DisplayLink had released beta drivers for the Mac, so I couldn’t resist trying out this technology. I haven’t used 2 displays in a long time since I’ve been using laptops (I don’t like using the built in laptop display as a second display as it feels awkward). Installing the drivers was a breeze, but the release notes kind of scared me and I realize that performance is not going to be that of a regular display, but I figured I’d give it a try. I hooked up a Dell 20″ display and it was immediately recognized. It seems to work well, but you can definitely notice the lag. I wanted to get it to have fairly static stuff displayed on it like my iChat buddy list, probably some iChat windows and maybe iCal. It won’t be very usable to Safari or things that change rapidly. It seems to work OK for mail and even composing a message wasn’t all that bad.
I have very high hopes of liking this and if I do, I might have to get another one for a third monitor. Of course, I’ll be pushing the limits of USB; I already have 2 USB hubs that are almost filled.
UPDATE: Setting the desktop picture to solid white makes a HUGE speed difference. While this sounds obvious, I just went with the default which is the same picture as on my main display.
Can we end non-binding resolutions?
The US House of Representatives this week apparently passed a resolution saying that China should talk to the Dalai Lama (which, of course, has pissed off the Chinese). This resolution carries no weight and means nothing. However, it took time for our lawmakers to draft it and pass it. Why do our elected officials waste our taxpayer money with this stuff that means nothing? They are lawmakers, not resolution makers.
I’d love to see a law get passed that makes it illegal to propose and pass resolution with steep fines as penalties. There is enough work for lawmakers to do without futzing around with stuff that doesn’t do anything.
Working multiple jobs
Whenever I hear that someone has to work multiple jobs in order to get by, my heart goes out to him (or her). These people work hard and nothing I do could ever compare to it. Sometimes I say that I work multiple jobs as I work on a number of different projects at once. While my mind works all the time (I’m currently working on 3-4 different projects right now), I have no idea what it would be like to physically work multiple jobs; I have enough trouble working 8 hours a day. I’m completely exhausted at the end of a day. I’d like to think that there is a better way for people to earn enough to live, unfortunately for many people that are unskilled or don’t have skills that are in high demand, there is no other way.
Getting paid to watch commercials
As I was watching our TiVo the other day, I saw that they had a new promotion; watch ads and get Amazon gift certificates. We had nothing to watch, so I watched some ads. This promotion is supposed to go on until sometime in June, so it looks like I’ll be watching more commercials! Talk about a way to get my to watch ads; if it only takes a few seconds and I can get free stuff, sign me up! This is much better than going to the movies and having to pay to watch ads.
Gadgets still in use
As a technology person, I always have gadgets lying around. I’m very attracted to them, but I lose interest in many very quickly which should make me think harder the next time I’m going to buy some technology product.
If we exclude the gadgets I’ve needed for projects (like a PSP, Palm devices, etc.), there are only a handful of devices that I still use.
- TiVo We’ve had our TiVo 3.5 years and it is probably the single piece of technology that if it broke, my wife would tell me to immediately replace.
- SqueezeBox When I installed our home stereo system a few years ago, I knew that I had to have a way to play music other than just the radio through it. I bought the SqueezeBox and it has been invaluable. When I found out that we could stream XM Radio through it, I had to buy a second one. Two may seem like overkill, but one lets me listen to my music and the other is usually tuned to XM Kids.
- Garmin Forerunner 305 While I don’t plan on running another marathon any time soon (my brother-in-law suggested we both run one in less than 2 months…he’s crazy!), I like being able to track my short runs as well as our walks. I may get the Forerunner 405 as I still love running.
- Chargepod It wasn’t cheap and looks kind of funny, but having one charger on my desk that my wife and I can both use to charge our phones and iPods is extremely handy.
- Apple TV Not for the real purpose of the Apple TV, but to run our music server. We just don’t have the energy to watch long movies and buying TV shows on the Apple TV doesn’t interest me.
- iPod Nano I still using my iPod when I run or workout; these days I mainly listen to podcasts, but it still gets used frequently.
I could start listing the devices that I have on the shelf, but that would start to get depressing to know how much stuff I didn’t really need to buy.
The art of baby proofing
Having a baby means a lot of things. To me, the latest thing is “baby-proofing”. There are lots of pieces to making a house ready for a baby/toddler to crawl around. The first step was putting up a gate to keep Aiden in the living room. That sort of worked, but the area was too big and still too many objects he could access, so we put in a portable play yard. OK, one room ready. Next was the kitchen. The previous owners had done some baby proofing, but didn’t finish or took it out, I can’t really tell. They had a combination of Tot Lok and other plastic clips. I liked the Tot Lok system as I didn’t have to reach my fingers in the cabinet to open it. So, I replaced some of the locks and installed locks on the rest of the doors and drawers. None of the drawers had the locks and the reason is simple. They’re a royal pain in the you know what to install. Furthermore, due to the panels on the front of our drawers, technically they aren’t even supposed to work. Well, I managed to get all the locks installed and yesterday finished our 2 bathrooms upstairs (the rest of the areas we can simply close the doors).
That’s a start, but not all of it. Since our house was built in 1973, the railing on the stairs wasn’t up to current safety code. When we moved in, there was cheap plexiglass zip tied to the railing to prevent little ones from getting their heads stuck between the rails. First thing I did when we moved in was rip that done; it was cheesy. Now came the time for us to need it. There were a few options, but the one that appealed to me most (and happened to be the most expensive) was to completely replace the railing. Now would be a good opportunity for me to get rid of the cheap looking steel railing and get a nice wood one. My wife said, “whatever, just get it done”. So I recruited my father to find someone to do the railing. Turns out there are only a few people that do replacement railings in San Diego. I got quotes and the railing should be completely installed on Wednesday (I still have to apply the finish which I’ve decided will be a clear urethane). It is looking good and will be another piece that makes our house look more modern.
I still have to anchor some free standing cabinets to the wall, but I’m well on my way to making our house a bit safer for our little one.
Samsung Instinct – Nice try, but…
Last week, Sprint announced the Samsung Instinct. It is a nice try to compete with the iPhone, but it just isn’t an iPhone. It runs on a great network (Sprint has an excellent data network), but Samsung and Sprint aren’t known for their cutting edge user interfaces. In addition, the iPhone has iTunes which is an easy to use application and actually works on the Mac; will the Instinct ever have Mac software? Unlikely as Sprint’s commitment to the Mac is mediocre at best. Granted it does have EVDO and some other cool features, but it doesn’t have the buzz of the iPhone and won’t have the third party applications that the iPhone will have in a few short months.
I’d love to see the iPhone on Sprint, but with Sprint heavily invested in this phone, even when the iPhone exclusivity with AT&T expires, the chances of this happening will be almost zero. I really like the iPhone and the only thing I have against the phone is AT&T.
Caught with his pants down
I had a user send me email the other day indicating that his copy of ReceiptWallet was already registered and he couldn’t enter his newly purchased registration code. He sent me a screenshot of the about box which shows the registration code and I ran the code through my database to discover a) it was never issued and b) it is in the wrong format to be a valid code. Hmmm. When I was at Macworld, I spoke to an engineer at eSellerate who indicated that their serial number library was updated to be more secure as there have been some cracks out there of it; I still use the library as some of my users purchased way back when I used eSellerate to process my sales. So, it would appear that there is a cracked serial number for DocumentWallet (and now ReceiptWallet) floating out there.
Should I be concerned? Not really. I know that software is pirated and just take that as a given. If I spent huge amounts of time building in super-duper code to handle piracy, I couldn’t spend time on the stuff people care about. I worked for a company way back when that spent so much time on anti-piracy, that they neglected to fix issues in the product and had few customers to show for it. I have blocked the serial number from use in future versions, but I’m sure it will get cracked again.
(Yes, I know I could do server side validation of registration codes and block them, but this gets people a bit paranoid if I go out of business, their software stops working. So, I’ll live with piracy.)
Back to the user; I’m not sure if I’ll hear from him again. While I didn’t accuse him of piracy, I did ask him questions about how long he’s been using the product as his original email indicated he had problems upgrading from DocumentWallet. Since he purchased ReceiptWallet last week, he either wasn’t using the product for the last 3 weeks (since ReceiptWallet 2.0 came out) or he was using DocumentWallet with a hacked code.
Tech support via Screen Sharing
One of the features that I really like about Leopard is iChat’s ability to do Screen Sharing. There have been different implementations of screen sharing including Apple Remote Desktop and VNC, but none is as easy to use through home routers as this. In the last week, I helped my dad with email (he just upgraded to Leopard) and helped a ReceiptWallet user with an issue. Sometimes it is much faster and easier for me to poke around than to talk on the phone or exchange email. While there are some problems with the feature dealing with different screen resolutions, for most people it works quite well. This feature, alone, is a reason to get anyone that you support to upgrade to Leopard; if you’ve ever spent hours on the phone trying to talk someone through a problem, then this is for you!
(Of course, certain firewalls and routers can cause this to fail. I got rid of my Linux server awhile ago that was my router and now things like Screen Sharing work quite seamlessly. If you have problems, stop kidding yourself and buy an Apple TimeCapsule or Airport Extreme and be much happier. It costs more than other routers, but the time and hassle it saves is well worth it.)