Diary of a Network Geek

Oh, this is cool!

Now, you have got to understand that I am a total office supply junkie. I love interesting pens and notepads and all that junk. I have a bunch of Moleskine notebooks, for instance. And, I've been trying to sketch out a new WordPress theme in a sad sort of design notebook I've been keeping. Obviously that hasn't been quite as well as I'd like, but this Web Design Sketchbook may inspire me a bit more.

It's from a site called HuntingLodge.no, which is in Norway, and there is a store, but it was being upgraded when I wrote this. It maybe working now, though. Basically, it's just a regular sketchbook, but with printed graphics on it that are like a browser window. So, when you're sketching the design, whoever you're sketching it for can sort of see how it would look in a browser window. How cool is that!? I know I'll end up having to get one of these from them when their store is working again, but, until then, enjoy their "review" of it.

Ah, the age old question!

So, I've been working on a blog in secret. No, dear readers, I haven't been two-timing you like a cad, I promise. What I have been doing is working on a more professional blog that's more focused than this one. And, therein lies the rub. I have a topic in mind and I originally had a goal of writing 52 posts before launching. That'd be one post a week already on the shelf just waiting for me to roll it live as the mood struck me. One whole year of weekly posts about this one, particular topic.

Now, I meant that as a base, a starting point. I was going at it like starting a business and gathering more than enough assets together before going live so as not to disappoint later. But, now, I'm thinking it may be too much.
You see, dear readers, I'm having bit of trouble writing all 52 of these little devils. It doesn't seem like much of a task, at first, writing 52 short essays on a single, rather broad, topic. But, with a full-time gig and another blog and all that Lost to watch on DVD, well, it's gotten far more difficult that I could have imagined. Also, I'm starting to think I may have been a little too ambitious. For example, I stumbled across Scott Berkun's site, which has an Essay section, and he has 60 essays spread out over about ten years. Ten years! Holy Flying Spaghetti Monster! That's far, far less than I thought I should have.

So, I put the question to you, faithful readers, how many and how often should a focused blog post long, brilliant, insightful essays on topic? Is once a week too often? Not often enough? Just right? Or, perhaps, is once every two weeks more reasonable, with smaller bits in between?
Vote in the poll and let me know! (Also, feel free to comment!)

TheInternational

Originally uploaded by Network Geek
I saw The International Friday night.

It was pretty good, but not great.
This movie has been out for a little bit now, but I'm sure it's still in theaters because it's a pretty decent movie and, of course, rather timely, considering it's about a bank. Rumor has it that it was, in fact, based partly on a real story, but I can't confirm that.
In any case, the basic premise is this; a former Scotland Yard detective who's moved over to Interpol has been after a giant, huge corrupt, shadowy bank, the International Bank of Credit and Commerce, for many years and finally gets close, but at what cost? The movie stars Clive Owen as the Scotland Yard/Interpol investigator who's become obsessed with the bank. The movie also stars a totally unconvincing Naomi Watts as a New York Assistant DA who's going after the bank to try and shut down one way the Mob launders their money.

The movie opens with Owen's character waiting for a fellow investigator to come back after making contact with one of the bank's high-ranking officers who's about to turn on his employers. Before this investigator can cross the street, he's killed by a very slick professional hitman in the employ of the bank. Before the night is through, the bank official is dead as well. But, the former Scotland Yard man is obsessed and now he's close enough to smell blood, so he pursues every lead, every possible opportunity to get at the bank, even when it leads him almost to his own destruction.

Again, this movie wasn't bad, but, frankly, for an action flick it was very slow. It really never took off and barely kept going at all in several places. Oh, there were several assassinations, and chases, one across the rooftops in Turkey, but, outside of an incredible scene in the rotunda of the Guggenheim in New York, there wasn't anything that really caught fire.
Now, that scene in the Guggenheim was something else. It was ultra realistic, which was actually a bit of a plotting misstep, to be honest. They catch up to the assassin, who they are sure is going to let them crack the bank, but the bank has sent a team of really sloppy hitmen that spray the museum with bullets. It was incredible! And, the exact opposite of everything the bank had been doing up until that point in the movie. A total betrayal of their previous sneaky, hidden moves and completely out of character. There was one point, however, when someone tumbles off the railing and bounces down several flights of the circular balconies, finally braking his back on the lowest rail, that is so realistic it made me and the guys I went to see the movie with all wince. Trust me on this, that is one realistic scene!

All in all, it was okay. Not too many surprises, honestly, and slow for an action movie, but not bad. If you need to see this one, though, try for a matinee and avoid paying full-price. It's not quite worth that.

I love strange, quirky design elements.

I don't know, maybe it's because I used to schtupp a web designer or maybe it's just that Marketing degree. Whatever it is, I just really enjoy funky design in the real world. But, I am still a hardcore geek at heart, so when something combines the two, I just love it. Naturally, when I saw the Photoshop Magnets and Magnetic Board, I instantly loved it.

Basically, these are just magnets that look like menus and dialog boxes from Photoshop. You can use them on the magnetic board, or buy them separately for your own magnetic surfaces, to hold up your pictures or art. Again, there's just something cool, and yes, geeky, about having magnets that make your fridge look like Photoshop that just appeals to me.
They're not cheap, but they do look fun.

"If you're reading this, I must already be dead..."

No, I'm not actually dead, something which no doubt has disappointed a number of people, including my ex-wife. However, as a single man with few attachments, it does occur to me that I could go missing for several days before anyone thought to look for me. What's more, I can think of several people who wouldn't be too broken up over my untimely demise. Besides my ex-wife, I mean.

So, what to do? We live in a modern age filled with technology and wonder, but also, a few modern problems. If I were to die unexpectedly, there are certain bits of information that it might be nice to pass on to the right folks. Things like security passwords and bank access information and the like. You know, all those clever logins and sign ons and "super sekret" passwords that we all have accumulating like so much karmic sedimentary rock in our oh, so very modern lives. These aren't things I want just anyone to have, nor do I necessarily want anyone to have them just yet. For that matter, there may be things I want gone, too. Files that would be better deleted than passed on to scar loved ones and that sort of thing. So, again, what to do?

Well, someone has started a service called Death Switch. This is a service that gives you a login to an automated system which prompts you for a password on a regular schedule. If you don't enter the password on schedule, it sends several addition, emergency-level queries to you and, if those go unanswered, fires off e-mail to the recipient of your choice. If you pay for an account, you can attach files and send the e-mail to multiple recipients.
Naturally, being the cheapskate that I am, I searched around a bit for other services. I mean, if I'm loose with what little money I have left, I won't have much to leave behind, outside of a brilliant library and a fascinating personal journal. (Remember, kids, the juiciest bits of my life don't really make it into this blog!) Well, what I found was another, free, service calling itself Dead Man's Switch. Naturally, the service is somewhat more limited, but, again, it's free. Oh, and I would assume that the level of security is somewhat less, too. Hey, you get what you pay for.

The only thing is, neither of these address the problem of files on a hard drive. Well, I have an answer for that, too. Now, this option is a little more "do-it-yourself" as it's no longer supported by the author, but it does have the bonus of running right on your computer. Well, your Windows computer. Sorry, this is a Windows-only solution. The bit of freeware is called, not surprisingly, Dead Man's Switch, though it was most often referred to as "DMS". You can still download it for free from PC World, though and install it. I used it for quite some time when I was working someplace I didn't trust. You see, this little doosie can be set to encrypt files, too. So, for instance, if you're not dead, but you've been suddenly let go from a consulting gig, you can set this to run on your workstation and encrypt your files which you were forced to leave behind. Oh, sure, it may not be ethical, but, well, at least you know it can be done.

So, rest easy now, dear readers, and know that I can e-mail postings to this blog should the unthinkable happen. Hell, for all you know, it may have happened already and these posts are all just a sendmail shell script. With the Network Geek, almost anything is possible.
See you on the other side!

Funny thing. Yes, as it turns out, it does.

And, now it's been mostly proved by science.

That is all.

I love toys.

I never worked at one of those cool Internet startups in the Nineties, but I sure wanted to at the time. Not just for the cash, which would have been enough of a reason, but because, well, it was were all the geeks were cool. Seriously! And, they had money to blow so they kept places like Amazon flowing and that Internet food-delivery place running. And, they had the coolest toys on their desk...

So, now, when I see cool toys for a geek's desktop, I have to make a note. That's what I thought when I saw Tokyo Cube Desktop Toys. So, go re-live those days of yore and oogle the toys.

(And, we already had a Friday the Thirteenth post recently, so I'm not mentioning it again!)

JuicemanJunior

Originally uploaded by Network Geek
I've started juicing.

This is probably not a big deal to anyone else but me, but, well, I've gotten a juicer and started juicing. Now, this does not mean that I'm using steroids, which is what I think of when I hear "juicing". No, this is actual juice, made from fruits and vegetables. Mostly, though, vegetables.

I don't eat very well. I admit it. I don't get the daily recommended amount of fruits and vegetables and I eat far, far too much meat. I know this. I know this is why I tend to be so heavy, why my blood pressure is as higher than it should be, why I feel older than I should. I know I should eat better and be healthier to help keep cancer from coming back. So, I'm making a compromise.

When I was near the end of chemo, it seemed like every cancer survivor I ran into asked me if I'd gotten my juicer yet. I'd meant to get one of those years ago, I would tell them. And, I'll have to get around to that one of these days really soon, I'd add. But, more than a year after finishing chemo, I still hadn't done it. No, it took my own vanity to push me to go get one, any one, to try. See, I need to keep my nutrition levels as high as possible, while keeping my calorie intake as low as possible and juice seems like the way to do it.
So, I bought a juicer.

It is, in fact, a Juiceman Junior brand juicer, named after the original juice advocate. Though, sadly, he can no longer call himself the "Juiceman" due to contractual obligations. Still, he was the one everyone remembers from the late night ads and the Jim Carrey skit on In Living Color. I thought it would make me all crazy, like everyone who was on those ads seemed to be, to me. But, it hasn't made me any crazier than I already am. And, you know what? I've been enjoying the juice!
Yeah, who would have thought it? I like taking apples and carrots and celery and spinach and parsley and ginger and sweet peppers and juicing them all together. It's pretty amazing. Oh, sure, at first glance it looks disturbingly green and I was sure it would taste terrible, but, really, it doesn't. In fact, it tastes sort of good. And, now, I'm getting into a rhythm of making enough juice for two or three days at a time, so it's actually getting easier to do! It's sort of a pain to clean the machine, but, so far, I like the results, so it's worth the work. I don't think I've lost any weight yet, but I do feel better already.

So, yeah, as strange as it seems, I've become one of those crazy juice people. And I don't even mind!

Watchmen

Originally uploaded by Network Geek
Well, I do, for one.

"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?", for those of you who don't know, translates, roughly, to "Who watches the watchmen?" And, yes, it's been made more famous by popular culture and a little comic book series, later gathered into a graphic novel, by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons titled "The Watchmen"

The story, in brief, is about a group of retired heroes. Well, more like masked vigilantes, since only one of them, Dr. Manhattan, really has super-powers, per se. The story opens with a murder. The victim is a brutal man who went by the name The Comedian, though he was far from funny. The rest of the story then is the quest of a fellow "hero", named Rorschach, to solve this murder. Naturally, he visits The Comedian's old friends and enemies and gets into quite a bit of trouble himself along the way. And, as he follows his investigation, he stirs up old memories, which we see as flashbacks. One thing I liked about both the comic and the movie is that it took Stan Lee's idea of showing us a more human superhero to the limit. We see so-called heroes being petty and brutal and sad. We see them love and hate and argue, just like real people would. Except, of course, these people move in a very different circle than we do indeed.
The entire story takes place in an alternate history where Nixon is elected for a third term in office and many other things have been altered or influenced by the addition of masked crusaders, super-science, mad geniuses, and at least one God-like super-being. It's an interesting world, to say the least.
I won't ruin either the comic or the movie by telling you how it ends, but, let's just say that there are twists and turns and global plots involved worth of the best comic books and handled as well as any superior fiction can handle them. Both, I think, are well done.

Now, that being said, I'll probably be at odds with the fanboys on this, but I liked the movie.
The movie followed the graphic novel quite closely, though there were many things that had to be edited out for time. The running time was fairly close to a full two-hours and forty-five minutes, but my understanding is that there is a giant "director's cut" version planned for the DVD release that runs a full FIVE hours. I can see how they might manage that if they filmed every scene in the book. It's quite dense. However, one reason to actually read, or re-read, the graphic novel before seeing the film is that doing so will help fill in the gaps that exist, by necessity, in the film. For instance, there was just a brief mention of Rorschach's origin and no explanation of how he got his ever-changing ink-blot mask, which confused the person I went to see the movie with who was not a fan of the comic. (Though, I think it's important to note that he is a comic fanboy, just mainly the Darkknight and more mainstream books.) Also, I think they could have cut some of the sex from the movie. Granted, I'm sure the scene where the Silk Spectre and Nite Owl get their freak on in "Archie", Nite Owl's flying car, helped get them their R-rating, they still could have trimmed it down to make room for something else a little more germane to the plot. The attempted rape scene, though it may seem a bit gratuitous, does at least have a central focus to at least one sub-plot, so I can see having it in there, but even that seemed... Well, they seemed to linger a bit longer on some of that than the plot really required. Oh, and as a word of warning, you do see quite a bit of Dr. Manhattan's giant, blue, glowing penis, so if that sort of thing bothers you, well, you've been warned. The violence is, at times, extreme, though no more extreme than what's pictured in the graphic novel. Of course, seeing it on screen does make quite an impact. My friend is far from squeamish, but I noticed he flinched several times, as did I, at parts of the ultra-violence. As an example, there's a bit with a meat cleaver that really drives home just how brutal and savage the world, and Rorschach, can be, not to mention another moment with a load of hot oil from a deep fryer that is startling to someone who's not anticipating it. There are other moments of brutality, also, but many of them seem, well, rather like comic-book violence and have no more impact than any other action-movie violence.
And, I should also add that the soundtrack was wonderful.  Lots and lots of Sixties classics.  It was a wonderful companion to the visual aspects of the movie.

The fanboys will be up in arms, no doubt, about what was cut and the relatively minor change in the ending. I won't reveal that here for anyone who wants to see the movie, but, personally, I didn't find it all that distracting or even very noticeable at all. In fact, I had to come home and whip out the graphic novel to check was had been changed!

I enjoyed this movie quite a bit and I'll happily being seeing it again with some other friends, I'm sure. Though, the next time, I'll definitely pee first. I sat through almost two hours of this movie with a brick-hard bladder so as not to miss a thing. And, I guess that should tell you how good I thought the movie really was. Not quite a Darkknight, but still, one of the best movies I've seen in a long time.
I'm sure Watchmen will prove to be one of the better movies of the year, no matter what the crazed fanboys or the out-of-touch critics think. Well worth seeing.

Yeah, more news, because this is a big deal.

So, this new Kindle is a really big deal. First of all, the latest version looks a lot better than the first one. The first Kindle looked like a prototype, but this version looks really slick. And, yes, there is a much nicer case available for it than there was for the first edition, according to Crunch Gear. From the pictures, it looks like they're going to have an aftermarket booklight, too. Houston's own Dwight Silverman has gotten his Kindle2 already and done a review, though I suspect he got his faster than the rest of us because, well, he's a newspaper guy doing a review.

But, with any big deal, there's always some kind of problem, right?
According to this article on the Wall Street Journal, the Author's Guild is protesting the Kindle's ability to read aloud to you. They claim that this violates an "audio copyright" that every written work includes. Naturally, the contention is that a machine-read, machine-stored work read in a machine-generated synthetic voice is not what is intended by that copyright. I tend to agree. If this were a computer reading website text, would there be a copyright violation? I don't think so.
Still, it will be interesting to see how this works out.

I read an article the other day about how news is very soon not going to be free. The article claims that newspapers are losing too much money from the free news on their websites and are going to have to start charging very soon. If that happens, I really think I may just buy a Kindle, one of those fancy covers, and subscribe to a couple of papers that way. I mean, I really see the Kindle as an adjunct to print media, not a replacement for printed material. So, I don't see myself no buying actual books any more.

Either way, I suspect that I'll have quite a wait based on how long the delay is in getting one. Even if I were totally ready to buy, which I'm not quite, it'd probably be months before I could actually lay hands on the Kindle2, since I'm not a reporter doing a review. But, I do have to admit, this version is a lot more attractive than the last version!

UPDATE: I totally forgot to add the fact that there is now an iPhone app that lets you read Kindle-format books on your iPhone, too.  It sounds like it's meant to be an addition to your Kindle, but they claim you can use it instead of a Kindle, so who knows.  I wonder how long it will be before they have a similar application for the Blackberry.  Now that would be something, wouldn't it?