Tralfaz

Blog

  • Where did all those people come from?

    Where did all those people come from?

    This morning, I had a meeting with someone who was interested in collaborating on a project. We picked a small boutique coffee shop near my office (that I selfishly could walk to) and a time that seemed to be between the morning rush, and their noontime bump.

    Fortunately, the person I was meeting got there plenty early to grab a table. Holy shit, that place was packed at 9:45. People talking, kibitzing, working on their novel, doing character development.

    The flippin’ line at the counter was 10 deep when I got there, it took 5 minutes to order, and then it took 10 more minutes for them to make my Cafe Latte.

    I mean, don’t these people have, uh jobs? Are that many people working off shift?

    What a pain in the arse.

    For the record though, Chromatic Coffee does make a fine cup, and is a bit more appealing than Starbucks.

  • Apple Mail – Revisited

    Apple Mail – Revisited

    As a long time Apple person, and a dedicated Mac user, starting with Mavericks, I had stopped using Apple’s built in mail client.

    I stopped using it for a variety of reasons, but essentially, the integration with Google mail really became, uh, shitty. Really weird, unreliable connections to the Gmail IMAP server, and finally I just gave up.

    I also subscribe to a mailing list of some really cool Mac OS-X users, and around that time there was tons of traffic about how shitty Apple mail was.

    I ended up first using Thunderbird (meh), and finally bought licenses to Postbox as it worked pretty well, and their support for Google’s mail services was quite good.

    Finally, with a recent upgrade to El Capitan (OS-X 10.11.2) the experts allowed that Apple finally un-borked their mail client. It even handles two factor authentication properly. Kudos!

    So, I am giving it a second try. And you know what? It isn’t bad. It is better than Postbox.

    Finally.

  • What I’m Reading – Lew Archer Novels

    As a voracious reader, who primarily focuses on Science Fiction, I do branch out. One genre that I enjoy is the detective thriller. This penchant can be traced to my love of the Doc Savage stories of my youth, and has jumped into some more or less serious threads of what I read. From the flippant Stephanie Plum novels (a guilty, fun pleasure) to the work by J.A. Jance, I have enjoyed many a cliff hanger stories.

    However, lately, I have become hooked on the Lew Archer novels by Ross Macdonald (pen name of Kevin Millar). Set in Southern California, and beginning shortly after the war, they stretch for 20ish years, and are lively depictions of the changes that the boom years brought to that part of California.

    The principal character, Lew Archer, is a private investigator, a lone gun, whose marriage failed, and who hung out his shingle after being an LA Cop. Unlike the friction you find between many TV private eye’s and the police, you get the impression that the local constabulary appreciate, and respect Archer.

    The stories often start with a missing person, or someone desperate for help, and the first person narrative draws you in, and holds your attention for 250 or so pages, almost always with a surprising twist at the end that keeps you guessing.

    One thing that I enjoy about these stories is that they don’t telegraph the antagonist. You often are truly surprised in the outcome, or that the obvious villain isn’t the culprit, yet, the obvious villain is rarely unbloodied at the end.

    One of the books that I just finished, The Wycherly Woman, was a classic example, where you thought you had it figured out, and then WHAM, it was a total surprise at the end. Additionally, this one was set in the San Francisco Bay Area, and having grown up there, it was a pleasant read about places I know well.

    Millar’s writing style is crisp, his vocabulary is deep, and he does a fantastic job of engaging the reader in these page turners.

    You could get wrapped up in a far worse series of novels. I have been through 10 or 11 of these, and have thoroughly enjoyed each one of them. Highly recommended.

  • More tinkering fun

    Back to the real world. I have re-immersed myself in the learning required to build a little automated, web connected weather station.

    I have been learning a lot about working with the Arduino (proto boards built around the Atmel ATMega 328 microcontroller), and have added some goodies around connecting sensors, working first with a 1 wire humidity and temperature sensor, and soon to come some more sophisticated modules that will be more flexible.

    However, while it is possible to do almost all of the work I want with the arduino based system, ultimately, I am going to want to drive a little display for review here in the house, and to log it to one of my internet servers, so I can be a geek and see the readings at home wherever I happen to be.

    This weekend, I dove into the Raspberry Pi, as that is a suitable central control, data logging station, and a vehicle to push the readings to the internet. However, it was a wee bit more complicated to get working than the Arduino. (more…)

  • Sad Days

    As anyone who knows me in real life knows, I have rescued Greyhounds. I have donated a lot of time and money to the southern Arizona Greyhound Adoption org, and ran their website for a few years.

    Last Tuesday, we had to put one of our greys to sleep. He had long suffered from seizures, big, scary grand-mal epileptic seizures that had been increasing in both frequency, and in numbers (clustering).

    While we knew the end would come, and that the decision was inevitable, it still hurts to lose one of your fur kids.

    I am not as sad as when we lost his predecessor, Oliver, whose osteosarcoma was sudden, and aggressive. We have known for a long time that with Tate, our job was to weigh quality of life versus, the horrors of seizures.

    I am using my other blog, Greytbros, to write a series of posts to remember the good times, and the joy that he brought us.

    Having a seizure dog is a difficult course, and we are glad we could make his 5 years with us as enjoyable as possible. In the end, he passed peacefully, and while there is a huge Tate sized hole in my heart, I take comfort in remembering the good times.

  • A rekindled affair – Guitar

    A rekindled affair – Guitar

    Enough with the complaining about hosting, while I am sure I will again blog about the sad state of affairs in that realm, today I want to talk about something fun.

    I have been a guitar player since 1983 or so. I got a late start, in my last year of high school, so I wasn’t a child prodigy or anything, but I had long wanted to play, and guitar was the cool thing.

    Many stepping stones, lessons learnt, and gear came and went, but one thing I always wanted, but never really pulled the trigger on was recording gear. I remember the wonder of working with my guitar instructor who had borrowed one to record a demo for his band, and just how cool it was. A standard cassette tape, two sided, each side had a stereo recording, so by the magic of electronics, if you had the right gear, you could record 4 distinct tracks separately on a single, commodity cassette tape. (more…)

  • More web hosting thoughts

    I learnt early on that you get what you pay for, and web hosting is no different than any other good or service. There was a time when $3 – $6 a month got you a pretty good deal as the explosion in hosting services was happening, but as with all services that are shared, the only way the economics work out is to over subscribe.

    The same happens with internet service (if everybody downloads at full speed at the same time, the “promised” throughput will fail miserably) and with hosting.

    Usually, you either suck it up and deal with glacial response from massively shared mysql servers, or someone destroying the IOPS on the SAN, or you move to a provider that isn’t a dirtbag, and you pay more for that service.

    Of course, if you have done that, and you get long downtimes and poor support, well, you moved once.

    Last week and a half were trouble for my web properties. The hosting I used, a VPS on A Small Orange was part of a lengthy and poorly handled downtime. Staring around X-mas eve, and continuing through to the 3rd of January, their VPS services were hosed. Hosed bad. Like can’t ping, no network route, and the brief flashes where I could ping, the storage was offline, so that my websites were down.

    Down hard. (more…)

  • Web Hosting Blues

    Why is it so hard to find a decent web host?

    Way back in 2009, I began blogging on wordpress.com, and by the end of 2009, I was hooked. I took the plunge, and signed up with MediaTemple hosting, a pretty slick operation that had a quite good product offering, with their “gridservers”. That worked well, and apart from some shared Mysql server bog downs, it was a pain free time. The few support issues I had (mostly around my ignorance) were handled cleanly and quickly.

    In 2012, at the formation of Southern Arizona Greyhound Adoption, I was drafted/volunteered to create and run their website. They had selected GoDaddy for their domain registration, and hosting. I had heard lots of bad things, but for the basic linux hosting we did, running a Joomla site, and handling a bunch of forwarded emails, it worked well. But what I hated about it was the constant hard sell. “Upgrade to xxxx“, “Buy more yyyy“, “DOn’t you need an SSL certificate?“. As a marketer, I was completely alienated by their hard sell at every interaction. Hell, when I called tech support, they even tried to sell something to me. They were worse than Comcast! (more…)

  • Marking another year …

    It is that time of the year, where I once again mark an auspicious anniversary. On Sunday, January 3rd, 2010, at about 8:00 AM, I had a heart attack.

    The morning began as usual, up at 5:00 AM, fed the dogs, had coffee and a light breakfast, a quarter cup of Grapenuts with skim milk. Then I headed to the gym, for an hour of cardio.

    I felt a bit off on the elliptical trainer. I was just “blah”, and couldn’t get my pulse above 100 or so from the monitor. I did make the full hour, but I just wasn’t up to the 5 minute cool-down period. So I left the gym, feeling crumby.

    I got home, and stepped into the shower. And it hit my like a ton of bricks. Shooting pains out the arms, and it felt like Dom DeLuise was standing on my chest. I stumbled out of the shower, naked, and wet, and walked down to my wife’s office. I told her I needed to go to the hospital. (more…)

  • The new Hawaii 5-0

    The new Hawaii 5-0

    As part of my Netflix binging, I have watched (most) of the original Hawaii 5-0 and the 2010 remake. An interesting amalgam of shows.

    The original series was a Jack Lord vehicle, a way to justify living in Hawaii, and to promote tourism in Hawaii. Beautifully filmed, the writing was crisp and fresh (for 1968 that is), and the stories were compelling.

    The Remake is refreshing. A lot more character development gets you more involved with the personalities behind the main players. In the original, over the 8 years I watched, there was “some” development of the McGarrett character (played by Alex O’Laughlin, a favorite for the ladies), and even less of the Danny Williams character. In the remake, there is a lot more background, and extended divergences into their backstories. (more…)