Tralfaz

Blog

  • What I am reading – Catcher in the Rye

    I had read it a long time ago.  I think I bought a used copy at one of my trips to Powells in Portland, but a recent re-run of a South Park episode, “Scrotty McBoogerballs” caused me to pick it up again.

    Certainly one of the best works of the 20th century.
    Certainly one of the best works of the 20th century.

    I am talking of course about Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger. A story told from the eyes of the main protagonist, it is alive with the references and language that a troubled teen would use. When I was in high school, the words were different, and I didn’t go to a boys only prep school, but we used the lingua franca of the times in our daily conversation, much as Holden does in Catcher.

    I did not read it as a teen, because at that time it was prohibited from the library. But had I, I would have identified well with Holden. Perhaps not as brusk or abrasive, but, like many, High School was a tumultuous time for me.

    The premise of the South Park episode is that the boys are assigned the book, and told it used to be banned.  Thinking that it was filled with foul language, sexual innuendo and other titillating tidbits, the boys are disappointed in how tame the book was.

    Likewise, my original thoughts on reading a “banned” book, the first time I read it I was looking for the causes of that banishment, but failed to “get” the whole point of the story.  This time through, I am reading it carefully, enjoying and savoring the experiences of Holden Caulfield, and his recounting of his experiences. It is both entertaining, and thought provoking.

    If you haven’t read it, or read it a long time ago, I highly recommend picking up this classic, and re-reading it, perhaps a few times, to truly grok its fullness.

  • Facebook “Promote” post – Don’t waste your money

    The dog who is inspiring the "Jackie's Fund"
    The dog who is inspiring the “Jackie’s Fund”

    I manage a couple of facebook pages, one for my employer, and one for a non-profit that I work with (Southern Arizona Greyhound Adoption).

    I am constantly barraged by Facebook to “promote” a post to extend its reach, and get more responses. We recently took in a hound who had an injury on the racetrack, and we are doing some fundraising to cover the not insignificant vet costs.

    Our marketing team wanted to try to promote this post to see what the result would be.

    So, I signed up for it, gave them my Paypal information, and put a $15 limit.  They said that the post would reach between 3,000 and 4,000 people.

    4,022 people saw this post over the next 24 hours on their wall. Of this 87 people clicked on the post, or 2.1%. 7 people “liked” our page. Our website had 30 extra visitors that day (almost indetectable in the long trend), and not one additional donation.

    I posted it on my timeline, with a plea for my friends to cough up a buck or tow if they could afford it. That generated the ONLY donation that we have received that wasn’t in our existing network.

    My conclusion is:

    • Facebook promotions are worthless. They game the propagation to try to encourage you to pay money to promote, but when you do, you get no results.
    • You are better off using your own network, and encouraging them to share than to use the facebook tools.
    • Facebook is a lousy vehicle for promotion. You may need to have a presence, but it just doesn’t translate into action from their billion + users.

    Oh, and if you want to help us out, and do something for the awesome greyhounds, head over to this link and click the “donate” button.

  • I use Ad blockers, but I am not a dick about it

    I have long been a religious user of ad blocking software.  Since the first plugin for Firefox back in the day, and now I use adblock across the board (chrome, firefox, and safari).

    I particularly hate ads on sites that I pay for (NY Times, I am looking at you), or where my information is the principal value to the company behind that site (Google and Facebook fall into this category).  But occasionally, I run into a site that politely asks me to not block their ads.

    When I do, 99 times out of 100, I add that site to my exclude list. Today that was http://phys.org, a physics news site that I visit occasionally. They had a message bar to alert me to my use of an ad blocker (which I just don’t think about).  When I find this unobtrusive reminder, I add their domain to my exclude list, and deal with the ads. They are almost always just a few banner ads, and nothing truly annoying.

    I did try using noscript and ghostery, but that pretty much destroyed the joy of web browsing (almost as much as my experimentation with TOR).

    Of course, occasionally, I browse with IE and I am inundated with ads, so I am never ever going to go adblock free.

  • Music Reflections

    When I first started making money, my goals were to be able to buy LP’s of music I liked. I put together stereo from old components, an old heathkit amp and tuner, some hand built (not great) speakers, and I splurged on a decent Technics turntable.

    What music did I buy?  Well, bands like Kiss and Cheap Trick were all the rage, but I had more eclectic tastes, and veered more towards what I called “art rock” (now widely called “Progressive Rock” or Prog Rock). Bands like ELP, Yes, King Crimson, were all in my early discs. I remember a DJ on KSJO who played all this awesome music that got me into a lot of great tunes. Greg Stone was his name, and from him I got into Camel, Gary Moore, Alan Holdsworth, Jeff Beck (and the yardbirds), The Moody Blues, and more.

    I started playing guitar, and then my tastes ran toward harder rock. Led Zeppelin, UFO, Michael Schenker Group, Scorpions, Y&T, Ratt, Steeler, Yngwie Malmsteen all were on my daily playlist. And who could forget Rush, especially the early work (through moving pictures)? Also lots of what is called “classic rock”, pink floyd, AC/DC, Kansas, etc is in my collection now.

    As time went on, I kept adding from these genre’s, not really straying far. As some friends veered into country, or modern rock from the 80’s, I stayed true to my roots. I got more into the Blues, listening to Robert Johnson, Johnny Winter, and a wide swath of Eric Clapton.

    Today, I still listen to most of the same genre. There are some new additions, Porcupine Tree, Special Machines, Marillion, collective soul, Blues Saraceno, Joe Satriani, Steve Morse, Frank Marino and Mahogany rush. So much awesome music, so little time.

    I was thinking about this as my 30th high school reunion is next weekend. I realized that I still listen to much of the same music as I did then, and really haven’t shifted into different and unfamiliar genres. I guess that the habits learned then will stick with me forever.

    The more things change, the more they stay the same…

  • Modest Ambitions

    The foot injury is getting better, but alas it is still pretty painful. I am pretty sure that it is a pulled or torn ligament in the top (the one for the big toe).

    I am cutting back on the vitamin I, and still resting and icing it. But I know that I am going to be going easy on it for the foreseeable future. Thus, no exercise, and that makes for a sad panda.

    My goals for the next two weeks are going to be to get this healed, and to not destroy my diet. Of course, with the trip next week and the reunion I am probably going to blow my calorie budget. So much for holding it constant with exercise.

    C’est la vie.

  • Almost back to normal – a week after re-imaging my laptop

    Last week, I had to get my laptop re-imaged. I had fouled up either my hive, or the install of Windows, so it had become incredibly unstable. Probably my fault. (ok, almost certainly my fault).

    It has taken a week to get back to functional. All the key software is installed. The settings are back to where I like them (for power options etc), and I got all the essential drivers sorted (you really need to have the touchpad driver installed and configured if you are going to type on this thing, otherwise the incidental contact on the touchpad will cause the cursor to move, and drive you batshit insane)

    We use Symantec endpoint protection, and I hate it. It is resource heavy, and there is no way (allowed at least) as an end user to adjust how it works. We also require our laptops to use whole disk encryption, which again is a resource hog. It only took 3 days for the 300G HD to initially encrypt (that took all weekend!!!)

    The only thing I forgot to do was to backup my IE favorites. And since there are internal sites that ONLY work on IE, I have to re-create them.

    Sigh.

  • What I miss about Tucson

    After being in Chandler for a year, I do have some things that I miss from Tucson.

    The weather – The predictable, and at times wild summer Monsoons. The smells of the desert after a storm is intoxicating.

    The critters – The den of gila monsters near our house, the snakes (gopher and diamond back rattlesnakes). The Colorful banded lizards, the cotton tail rabbits, the javelinas, the coyotes, the bobcats, well, you get the picture. Suburban Chandler is nowhere near as diverse.

    Cafe Poca Cosa – A local gem that I have yet to find a replacement for.

    Tucson Int’l Airport – Nothing like a small, local, easily accessible airport. Phoenix is typical big metropolitan, and chaotic (but we do get to most destinations non-stop)

    Living at the edge of town – We had a lot of privacy, and great neighbors who were friendly and supportive.

    Coffee Xchange – local coffee house that was vastly superior to any big chain.

    Mount Lemmon – 25 minutes away. A short drive, and you were at 9,000 ft. A different world.

    Hiking trails – Sabino canyon, window rock, finger trail, Douglas Springs, Saguaro Nat’l park. All within a reasonable drive, delivering world class hiking.

    Cycling – Saguaro East was always my favorite loop. Or head out Old Spanish Trail and into Vail for a longer ride.

    Tucson McGraw’s – a cantina/grill on the hill with a fabulous view. Decent drinks, good food, and great views.

    The Grill at Hacienda del Sol – Probably the best restaurant in town. Great views, entertainment, and fabulous wine list coupled with a great menu. A good splurge!

    Ah well, it is only 2 hours away…

  • Switching back to my iPad

    About 8 months ago, on a whim I bought a Nexus 7. Really to be used for testing websites I work on for how they look on that size screen, a few months ago I decided to give Android a fair shake. Caveat: I have been an Apple person since 2002 or so, and have been with iOS since the original iPhone, so I am clearly a biased opinion.

    The fair shake involved me using the Nexus 7 for all my media consumption, and tablet like duties (email, magazine reading, newspaper apps, etc). I did not “root” my device, or install a modified ROM. It is plain Android (jelly bean 4.2 right now I think). I have only used the Android play store, and I have never sideloaded apps (unlike most of my Android phanatique friends, who load tons of pirate apps).

    I have documented some of the annoyances in the past, but I will summarize:

    • The auto intensity adjustment is flakey. I read in bed, and the intensity switches levels a couple times a minute. I have never seen that with my iPad.
    • The interface is at times unresponsive. Mostly noticeable during games (for example Astra Solitaire is painful to play, because the UI at times take 2 or 3 stabs with your finger to get it to respond. But I experience this with many applications. From reading the forums, this is not an uncommon Android experience.
    • Gmail application. When I got this, it was great, very well mimicking the web browser version. But they have Google+’d it, and it sucks. I have gone back to using the “other” mail application.
    • Chrome is missing one killer feature. Safari on the ipad (and on my mac as well), has a “reader” mode. It strips all the miscellaneous cruft, and displays the main content in a larger, easy to read font. Yes, Chrome lets you double tap to size it to the window, but that often is still text that is too small to comfortably read.
    • The facebook application for android blows donkeys. It is just horrible. The iOS app used to suck, but about 4 months ago, a major rewrite made it killer and easy to use. Android still suffers here.
    • The Google Play music app is painful to use. Really hard to create/modify playlists on the device.
    • The accuracy of where it reads taps is odd. This is hard to explain, but for example, if you are looking at the device tilted back, and you pull up the email account selector on the gmail app, in the iOS world, it would know that you are looking at the screen tilted, and assume that you will tap a little low. Android misses this, and you select the one below your intent.
    • Battery life is atrocious. I don;t play much music, or video, but have to charge it every day to day and a half for 2 – 3 hours of reading, light browsing. My iPad (granted a much larger device), I get easily 3 – 5 days of that same amount of usage. And it is 2,5 years old, so the battery isn’t fresh. I suspect this is somewhat caused by a lot of background processes that are constantly active. Unlike my iOS devices, it does update programs and the system silently and in real time. So I often have updates in the notification area. IOS prompts me to upgrade apps, so I tend to do it all at once.

    I have heard people on the interwebz saying that the Nexus 7 is the best tablet out there, period. I suspect that they have never spent time with an iPad. It is just enough more polished, and less intrusive to knock the Nexus 7 off the pedestal that some place it. I haven’t toyed with one of the updated Nexus 7’s, perhaps they fix these gripes, but I suspect it is more tied to the Android OS, than the hardware, so I would be skeptical.

    So, I am back on the iPad, and I will keep dabbling with the Nexus 7, but it isn’t going to displace iOS for me. (as I said, I was biased)

  • Injuries – Foot edition

    I have battled the scourge that is Plantar Fasciitis for a few year now. First cropping up in early 2010, it is a painful condition that really needs lots of rest and strengthening exercises. Returning to physical activity too soon is a sure way to make it far worse, and last longer.

    What I have now is not it recurring though. This appears to be a sprain in the tendon on the top of the foot (instead of the plantar ligament), and affects only the ligament on the large toe. Ouchies. I have had this for a couple of weeks, and it seemed to fade pretty quickly (i.e. heal), but it came back with a vengeance on Saturday after a 26 mile bike ride. I guess the stress of pedaling on the upper ligaments of my foot are aggravating it.

    Sigh, rest, stretching, and vitamin I (ibuprofen) to see if I can get it to heal without a trip to the podiatrist. If that doesn’t work, I am sure it will be another series of prednesone will be in store.

    Getting old sucks. If your feet hurt, you are miserable. And foolishly exercising when you are injured is stupid.

  • Daniel Craig – Best Bond Ever

    I have long been a James Bond fan. Started in the Roger Moore era, then the Pierce Brosnan era, and the single Timothy Dalton episode.  Then I detoured though the Sean Connery set of masterpieces. Loved them all.

    But the new ones, with Daniel Craig as Bond are the best. Yes, the effects are amazing, but they always were the best that their time had to offer. The stories are better. They are more imaginative, and well written, and without a doubt less cheesy. But there is something else that Craig brings to Bond.

    My wife hit on it last night while we were watching Casino Royale, Daniel Craig get cuts, bruises and he looks like he has been involved in the fights, battles, and action. It adds a level of realism that brings the character to life.

    That, and Judi Dench is just kicks ass as ‘M’. Shame that they retired her in Skyfall, but I am sure Ralph Fiennes will carry the torch well.

    Looking forward to the Bond/Moneypenny interplay!