Tralfaz

Month: January 2016

  • Digital Scatter – Contacts

    Digital Scatter – Contacts

    A recent life change is forcing me to become more organized, and to remove chaos from some areas.

    One key area is my digital address book(s). Over the years, with my haphazard adoption of new technologies and platforms, it was inevitable that my growing list of contacts split among several services, would fester and be a moldering mess.

    There are definite epochs in my contacts. The first significant epoch being when I got a gmail account in 2004. There, Google began collecting my interactions and creating “contacts”. This sort of happened organically, to support the gmail client.

    Since I did little filling in of details, the vast majority of these contacts are little more than name and email addresses. Good for mailing, but not much else.

    Add to this my personal domain (that you are reading this on silly), another gmail (google apps) account, and another set of contacts, equally chaotic, and thin on details.

    Then in 2008 I joined the Smartphone revolution buying an original iPhone, and that became my go to device for managing contacts. This sync’d with the Mac “Contacts” application, so I had them on my desktop and on my phone. This is where I kept a bit more complete contacts, adding addresses and other information.

    Somewhere along the line, Apple got smart, and allowed you to collect the various contacts from gmail and other services into the Contact application (and moved their repository to the iCloud service). This is helpful, and provides a central location to look at and manage contacts, and (hopefully) clean up the clutter.

    Alas, 2 years, 3 or more repositories, and truly no rhyme or reason to my filing has caught up to me.

    Today, I spent several hours first cleaning up my gmail contacts, and then organizing my icloud contacts. Now, I have a sane contact database (and quite a few more people I know than I would have thought).

    The next challenge: My browser bookmarks. Shudder.

  • A month with Digital Ocean Hosting

    At the beginning of the year, there was a monstrous downtime at my host that was the final straw. I has a VPS there for a little over 2 years, and while at first it was rock solid and awesome, it had become less reliable through the summer of 2015. There were several down times, that were resolved with a reboot, or restarting the Apache server, or the mysql server.

    Not too big of a deal.

    Then the week between Christmas and New Years, the wheels came off at A Small Orange hosting. The VPS service there was by and large down.

    When it came back up, I was out of there lickety split.

    My destination: Digital Ocean

    Instead of a well provisioned VPS, where the configuration is pretty robust, fully provisioned with a firewall, WHM and CPanel built in, you get a very basic server, called a “droplet”. You can select the OS, and even do a lot of one click installs. LAMP, LEMP, WordPress, and many more options are preconfigured out of the box.

    I spun up two droplets, one a preconfigured WordPress installation (my main tralfaz blog), and then a blank droplet which I used the excellent serverpilot to create three simple wordpress blogs. Smooth process.

    One other benefit of Digital Ocean is their YUUUUUUUUGE collection of simple, granular articles to help people who are not super technical to get a clean, secure installation.

    Even if you are not a geek, you can get:

    • A clean ubuntu installation
    • Setup SSH with secure key authentication
    • Remove root SSH login (for safety)
    • Configure a UFW firewall with only the ports needed open
    • Install and harden a mysql installation
    • and much much more…

    For as little as $5 per month per droplet, you are good to go.

    Oh, did I mention that they have wicked fast data servers in many geographical regions?

    So far, 100% uptime for 30 days.

  • PSA: Telephone Directory Waste

    PSA: Telephone Directory Waste

    Who still uses their Yellow Pages local directory? Really, when was the last time you actually looked up a phone number or a service in there? Be honest.

    Or, are you like 99.3% of the population who just hits google on their smartphone, and off you go? Or checks out Yelp for reviews. For the last 10 years or so, we would get our new directory in the early spring, recycle the old one, and put it on a shelf, never to be opened.

    Lather, rise, repeat.

    How wasteful.

    Now though, you can opt out of receiving directories. The website YellowPagesOptOut will let you select which directories you want (probably none), and suddenly, this anachronism of the 19th century will be banished from your home.

    On, and you can do your part to reduce the 1,400,000 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions.

    Seems like a no brainer to me.

  • The downside of not playing out

    The downside of not playing out

    As I continue on my journey to record and capture some of the music in my head, I have come to a realization. Alas, my preponderance of playing solo, and without others, I lack something of the ability to “fit“. This will take some ‘splaining…

    When listening to an orchestra, you hear the whole piece together, where all parts fit. From the woodwinds, to the strings, to the percussion, all the musicians have their own part to play. Isolate one instrument, and you might not recognize the piece. But as you add the individual parts back in, you begin to see the thread.

    I have long known that writing for an orchestra is an art, and requires more than just musicality, but the ability to spatially separate the instruments, and to visualize (audibleize?) how they will sound together. It is why the greats (Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, and on and on) wrote music hundreds of years ago that still captivate and enthrall us today.

    But this is much the same with modern music as well. Think of the simple power trio. Cream was Eric Clapton on guitars, Ginger Baker on drums, and Jack Bruce on bass/vocals. The three of them played together perfectly, complementing, and intertwining their masterful musicianship. Each was borderline virtuosic, but balanced each other out, and the net result was kick ass music.

    My problem is that I have almost never played with a complete group like that. Sure, I have jammed with a bunch of fellow axe slingers, belting out some simple Dylan or Zeppelin riffs, trading licks and lead lines. Heck, even some original stuff was shared.

    But, playing with a solid timekeeper? Not much, except very early on in my journey with an old Heathkit metronome.

    Back to recording

    It is clear to me that this lack of practicing with a beatmaster is a problem. Laying down a track, and listening to it is getting better (getting around the “blinking red light syndrome”) as I am sounding more how I know I can. But due to my lousy practice regimen, I slow down and speed up during riffs, and as I map it against the measure markers on Garageband, I can see my imperfections.

    The first step in solving a problem is recognizing that you have a problem. Or so they say.

    Two things are amply clear.

    1. I need to practice more. A lot more. With more structure. I need to work on matching notes to a beat timing, and to become more aware of that.
    2. I need a simple drum machine, or other aid. Yes, I can do the click of a metronome, but something with the ability to accent the start of a measure, or to alert me to the sections of something I am playing is an aid I need.

    Fortunately, these are both simple things to address. Well, except for the blood sweat and tears of practicing.

    While I have been playing for over 30 years, and at one time was practicing 4-5 hours a day, my diligence has waned, and when I pick up the guitar, my instinct is to play things I know well, and have riffed to for a long time.

    I definitely need to expand in to uncomfortable territory to break out of ruts. I need to work on building a composition one track at a time, and to learn to better use the tools at hand.

    One last thing: I am clearly not ready to share my work, but I will admit that I am progressing. One day, I will post a song.

  • The downsides of leaving Facebook

    The downsides of leaving Facebook

    As I mentioned on Friday, I am taking a break from Facebook. I did a little bit of this in mid 2015, and one of the hard lessons learned was how pervasive Facebook is across the web for the SSO (single sign on) convenience. Sigh.

    At that time, I was astounded at how many places that Facebook had wormed their way into for validation and authentication. My Strava, Spotify, and others were all tied to my identity on Facebook.

    Fortunately, at that time I bit the bullet and did much of the extrication from reliance on the Facebook identity and authentication, so this break isn't quite as bad.

    Then this morning, I sat down to do some light (or heavy blogging), and fired up the Pandora app on my iphone to listen to some soothing classical.

    You guessed it, the app, even though I am signed in by email/password, was insistent that I "fix" my facebook connection. Finally, after the third try, it realized that indeed I do not have a valid facebook account right now.

    Jesus christ monkeyballs, that was a raft of stupidity.

    I am sure that as time goes on, I will find more shenanigans to work through.

    One thing is sure though, this pervasiveness is leaning me towards fully deleting my Facebook profile.

  • The final rest for Tate

    The final rest for Tate

    The bad day happened. No, not the actual decision and act to send Tate across the rainbow bridge because his seizures were escalating, and he was beginning to suffer the consequences. That was not a good day, but at least we could comfort ourselves knowing that we did the best we could for him.

    No, the call came from the vet, Tate’s remains were ready for us. Wow, a ton of bricks. Fortunately, I didn’t personally pick them up, or I would have lost it big time. No, Barbara already had a planned visit to the vet for some therapy for Garrett, so she got the short straw by default.

    Tate is back with us, where he belongs. And I am sitting here, tears streaming down my face as I remember how much he was a part of our house, and regardless of his faults, he was a wonderful, happy, boisterous, lovable scamp.

    Sure I don’t have to watch my paper napkin, lest he snatch it and eat it, or we can leave bread on the counter without it being snatched. But those were small concessions.

    Just last week, we were at his favorite place Edenvale park, walking Garrett, and one of the “regulars” asked where Tate was. We were stoic, and explained. I handled that well. So why does having his cremains returned to us emotionally devastate me?

    I can’t answer that, but it does. From the cedar box (arguably the best cremains return we have had), to the ceramic tile they made with his pawprint. I sit here, a wreck, acknowledging that he is well and truly gone, taken from us far too young, but also knowing that we made the right decision.

    Adulting is too hard this weekend.

    Posted also on Greytbros

  • Taking a break

    Taking a break

    I am going to step back from the great time suck that is Facebook. Sadly, it it taking too much of my time, and is too addicting. Being on my phone, my ipad, and on the browsers, it is just too damn available, and irresistible.

    I will be sad that I am going to miss some epic meme’s and other fun stuff, and I will also miss the hilarity of some of the communities I am a part of. Yet, I still feel the need to take a hiatus.

    Staring down another election cycle, the clown car of the GOP candidates, the coming ugliness that I can see in the Democrats, I can say that this is a good time to give it a rest, to improve my blood pressure and stress levels.

    I took a short (few week) break in mid 2015, and a 9 month or so break in 2009, but ultimately came back. This time, I might make the break permanent. I plan on redirecting the facebook URL to 127.0.0.1 in the hosts file, so that I can’t have even a moment of weakness and reactivate my account. I will delete it off my iphone and my ipad.

    I will miss my friends, those I know IRL, as well as those that I have only known via the magic of social media.

    I will remain active on Twitter (@ganders2112 is my handle there), and of course, you can follow/subscribe to my blog, where I will continue to post.

    Cheers, au revoir, auf weidershen, さようなら, adios

  • The dreaded red light

    The dreaded red light

    I have played guitar a long time. Like 33 + years (I hate to think how long it has been, really). While I don’t play out much (or at all) anymore, I did get to a certain level of proficiency. Sitting on the couch, noodling, or jamming in my man-cave, it sounds pretty good, if I do say so myself.

    Alas, I never had any recording gear, having not prioritized that, but I recently rectified that situation. Bought a good A/D box for my mac to be the input, and finally got my old Line 6 Pod XT out of mothballs to tweak up the tone.

    All good, got a good groove on the monitors, and then I do it.

    I hit the “record” button. Suddenly, I am self conscious, I flub even the most practiced riffs, I blow the easiest chord transitions. Shit, even some of the finger picking stuff I have played backwards and forwards so often that it takes truly no thinking at all are muffed.

    What. The. Fuck.

    Yep, the dreaded performance anxiety, that red light, watching the recording in Garageband. I sound like a newb.

    Turn a way, turn it on, and just jam, and shit, it sounds good.

    Turn back to it, listen to the count in, and I sound worse than cats on a hot tin roof.

    Sigh, I am going to have to get over this.

    Also, I need a drum machine, or something to lay down a decent backbeat.

  • Latest Binge – Poirot

    Latest Binge – Poirot

    My latest Netflix binging is the ITV adaptations of the Agatha Christie stories “Poirot”. 12 season, beginning in 1989, and concluding in 2012 (not continuously of course), set in the pre-war England, they are intriguing tales of suspense, and the sleuthing of Hercule Poirot, the Belgian investigator.

    Ok, not really binging, but I have been watching them, and just broke into the 5th season. The tales are tight, compact, and enrapturing. Always starting with a murder or some foul play, the engagement of the infamous Hercule Poirot, and the details being the key to solution.

    About 6 months ago, I purchased the collections of Poirot by Agatha Christie (on a lark, I believe it was $8 for the Kindle), and I was fascinated with how closely the stories were translated to the shows. Having watched them in the past, and then read the stories, it was amazing the translation to film.

    Additionally, one of the reasons that I enjoy watching, and have continued watching, is the cinematography is fantastic, and the attention to details are remarkable. Period dress and costumes are spot on, the automobiles, and other modes of transportation are spectacular, and quite enjoyable.

    The lead actor, David Suchet, who play Poirot, does a fabulous job, truly “wearing” the role. A fastidious Belgian, who speaks with a heavy French accent, and is marvelously alien in the setting of pre-war England.

    Photo: “David Suchet” by Phil Chambers from Hamburg, Germany – Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 via Commons –

  • Stepping stones towards a weather station

    Continuing on the thread of projects, my ultimate goal is to build a two station weather station that has in interior display of inside and outside temperature, and outside humidity/temperature readings, ultimately logging it to one of my websites, and then displaying it in graphical form.

    This weekend, I got a little bit closer. I learnt how to hook up an LCD display to an Arduino system, how to display formatted data, and then connected two different sensors to gather the data.

    The first test was to hook up a Sensiron humidity and temperature sensor to the arduino. Fortunately, Adafruit makes a handy breakout board for this device, and some libraries to use it. As an i2c device, it has a lot of support, and connecting it was a snap. Supply 5V, and connect the SDA/SCL and you are good to go.

    The Sensiron sensor is what we use in the chamber of our 7500 series AFM, so I know it is accurate and reliable.

    The sketch is pretty simple, you load the libraries for the SHT series, and instantiate an instance of the device, and it just works. You ask for a reading, and BAM it is there for the using.

    The second part was connecting the 2×16 character LCD display. This has a little backpack decoder, and the Arduino IDE has built in support for it. Piece of cake to get it going.

    It is of course a little trickier than the serial console, as the print/println aren’t part of the methods, but a little character counting, and voila, it was displaying the RH and Temperature every 10 seconds.

    To test this, I programmed, it, and then unplugged it, taking it into the kitchen, plugging it into a USB charger, and it worked. I am almost impressed!

    This is a pretty big hurdle, but the next hurdle is a lot taller. Ultimately, I want to have it log data to a file, then send it to a small raspberry pi system to display, and to upload to the internet.

    My next step will be to build a simple data logger, and begin to finalize the sensors I will use for the remote system. Fortunately, there is built in support for SD cards (although I will need a breakout board to connect), and I have both a DHT22 sensor for raw humidity and temperature readings, and a Bosch BMP180 breakout board for barometric pressure and temperature reading.

    Exciting, and rewarding.

    But the progress is ongoing, and my shopping cart is filling up with goodies to buy…