Diary of a Network Geek

I haven't heard much in the US news about the fires in Victoria, but I know it's bad.

I know people down there, though, thankfully, none of them seem to be effected by the bushfires.  Still, a lot of people are and the death toll has topped 200.  But, I won't dwell on how bad it is.  Instead, I'd rather point out some folks trying to help.

This is mainly for the techies and comes to me via ProBlogger.  SitePoint, who publishes really interesting web design books, among other things, has their headquarters in Melbourne, the capital city of Victoria.  In their effort to help out their neighbors, they've got a special deal going on their eBooks.  Now, through Friday, Australian time, SitePoint is offering five books of your choice for the price of one, in PDF format.  The proceeds of this will all go to help the Australian Red Cross Victoria Brushfire Appeal.  It's a worthy cause and you get some great books out of the deal, too.  So, if you've got the cash, it'd be a great way to help out.

Just thought I'd let folks know.

Right, so I'm sure a couple of my readers are waiting for me to weigh in on the new Kindle.

Yeah, yesterday, Amazon released the new, very much improved Kindle eBook reader. Lot's of folks were talking about it; Lifehacker, the Houston Chronicle's TechBlog and, of course, Gizmodo. The most coverage is at Gizmodo, though, as they did a liveblog through the release.
In a nutshell, what they've improved is the design itself, the battery life (by 25%), the memory (now two gigabytes, or about 1,500 books), the screen and graphics. So, you know, just about everything on the physical device is better. Also, there's an experimental feature that reads the books to you, which actually sounds sort of cool. And, now, apparently, you can move books from reader to reader, though they did seem to be only in one place at a time. You know, I'm actually okay with that, if I can transfer the book to someone else's Kindle, because then it's no different than a physical book that can only be in one place at a time. If, and that's a big if at this point, if that's how it works, I may just have to get me one of these.

The one "downside" to this is that the price is staying the same. Now, I think it may just be worth paying that $359 for this device. I mean, it really seems more worth it to me. Oh, and the cover which came with the older version is now an extra $25, or so. So, that bumps the price up a bit, but, still, I'd probably be looking at a better cover anyway.

The one thing that I haven't seen any coverage on is adding my own documents to the Kindle. I have a lot of personal documentation of one kind or another that would be really nice to have on a reader like this. PDF files and text files filled with all sorts of custom and personal manuals and instructions and the like. If they made it easier to get that onto the Kindle, then, I may just be sold.

No, really, it's way, way too easy.

Why do I say that? Because an eight-year old has just become an MCSE.
Look, there's a lot of debate in the industry around how valuable certifications really are. Most of us know that the only real value that certifications have are to get you past Human Resources and in front of a hiring manager who actually knows the technical side well enough to know if you're really qualified. Sure, I've got my Novell and a Linux certification and, yes, that attracts Headhunters who have to sort us some way, but they're not an accurate measure of what I can really do. I've never bothered to get my Microsoft certifications, though I probably should. I haven't bothered because they've got the worst reputation for being so-called paper certifications. It's possible to get them without ever having touched a machine with Microsoft systems installed on it at all. A point proven by an eight-year old completing the certification.
What is wrong with that picture Microsoft?

I didn't become a professional geek by accident.

No, my computer and network skills were hard won from mind-numbing texts of truly Brobdignagian proportions. I owe that ability mainly to my mother, though my father was very "reading positive", too.

NEA says reading is on the rise, though the guy at the LA Times seems somehow offended by that. Somehow, that seems kind of funny to me, that a guy who makes his living based on people reading would get so snippy about what should be good news to his profession. Maybe it's because they're talking about people reading fiction, not non-fiction, that makes the difference. Frankly, as someone who wanted to be an author once, I think any kind of reading being more popular is a Very Good Thing. I just hope it's not over-stated in any way and actually happening!

Well, mostly and only from adults.

You know all the scary stuff the media has been telling us about on-line predators and how they're all out to get our kids? Turns out, it's not as true as the sensationalist, bottom-feeding media would have us believe. In a story at the New York Times, via Slashdot, they discuss a report done by an independent group who took a closer look at those claims about the endless waves of Very Bad People who were just lurking on social media sites to steal our children and it turns out they were mostly over-blown. Oh, to be sure, such things happen and those people do exist, but the study indicated that those children who were at risk on-line were at risk period. In other words, the Internet was just a facilitator, not a root cause.

Also, the study found that kids were more likely to have trouble with other kids. Cyber-bullying, and bullying in the real world, was found to be a much, much bigger problem and far more pervasive.

The thing is, though, it's much easier to take the low road and whip everyone into a frenzy over a problem like child molesters running free on the Internet than it is to take responsibility for our own kids and how they treat others.

Taken

Originally uploaded by Network Geek
I saw Taken Friday night with a group of friends for a "guys night out".

First of all, let me say that this was a pretty simple, straight-forward movie in terms of plot and message. Of course, that was one of the things I liked about the movie. The bad guys were undeniably bad and the good guy was, well, a little bad, too, but considering that he was a father saving his daughter from a white slavery ring, I think that's understandable.
Okay, so this movie is probably not going to win any awards or be very acclaimed by the critics, but I liked it a lot. It stars Liam Neeson as a former CIA agent who sacrificed his family and home-life in his dedication to the job. As a result, he's become estranged from his now teenaged daughter. In an attempt to fix that, he's given up his work and moved to L.A. to be near his daughter and his ex-wife and his ex-wife's very rich new husband. Neeson plays a pretty sympathetic character, I think. At least, he's sympathetic to anyone who's ever been a father. He's quite protective of his daughter, which is understandable both because of the world we live in and the job that his character used to do.
The plot, as much as I can say without revealing anything important, revolves around his daughter going on a trip to Europe. A trip about which she is not quite entirely honest with her father. It's a classic plot launcher for simple, straight-forward movies like this that the dishonest must pay. And, she does. To start with, things aren't quite as she's been led to believe and she's alone with another girl in Paris. That alone wouldn't be so bad, but they run afoul of Albanian white slavers. Man, there's nothing I hate more than Albanian white slavers. (Yes, I'm poking a bit of fun at how often they emphasized the fact that these guys were, in fact, Albanians. I guess someone had an axe to grind.)
In any case, Neeson's character gets a panicked phone call from his daughter as she's being taken. He warns the men to let her go or they'll be sorry, but they don't listen. Basically, they have no idea just what kind of damage Neeson's character is capable of dishing out, or that they're about to feel the full effect of that skill at hurting people.

And, again, without revealing too much, for about an hour and thirty minutes, what you have is Liam Neeson chasing bad guys all over Paris. Chasing them on foot, in cars and on a boat. Chasing them down alleys, hallways, stairways, through rooms filled with parties and criminals. Often, shooting them when he finally catches them. Occasionally cutting them or stabbing them. At least once, hitting them with a pipe and hooking one up to electricity. But, I assure you, he only does that to the bad guys. Oh, well, except for the one time he wings the wife of an old colleague who's gotten corrupt. Other than that, though, he's only shooting, stabbing, punching and torturing the bad guys. Honest.

I won't tell you how it ends, but Taken is a very good action movie indeed. Edited down to a PG-13 here in the States, it was even more violent in other places, so I really look forward to a Director's Cut DVD. It's no surprise to me that this is at the top of the box office returns this weekend. It was a great movie and I recommend it whole-heartedly to anyone who digs action without gratuitous explosions. Again, it's a simple, straight-forward movie, but it delivers on every promise it makes in the trailers, ads and reviews.
Well worth seeing in the theaters on the big screen!

If there aren't any pages, is it still a book?

Does an eBook's page turn make a sound if there's no one there to hear it?
What, I wonder, will it take for these miraculous devices to finally catch on? I'm sure it comes to no surprise to my regular readers, but I love books. I love reading and I love writing and I love the printed word, as I've written before. But, my personal library is starting to take up a lot of room. I'm not sure how many books I have, but it's easily in the low thousands. I live alone, in a fairly good-sized house, without anyone, really to check my acquisition of lovely, lovely books, so, the numbers get away from me. But, I can say this, there are books in every room of my house. Every. Room.
Well, another thing that I'm sure will also not be a big surprise to my loyal readers, is how much I love science-fiction. Digital books, in some form or another, have been a staple of science-fiction for a very, very long time. It's an idea that I love. I like the idea of a single, small device that's able to access the entire encyclopedia, several newspapers, my favorite magazines, and whatever couple thousand books I might decide I just can't live without. In a world, real or imagined, where space is becoming a premium, books that take up virtually no room would be a plus.

That's why I can't figure out the lack of market penetration that eBook readers have enjoyed! This article on BusinessWeek talking about the new, as yet mythical, revision of Amazon's Kindle is what got me thinking about it. And, all the more for the fact that they're as baffled as I am!
It's not like the Kindle is the first eBook reader, either. The Sony Reader has been around for some time, in one form or another. And, there are others, too, like the iRex Iliad, to name just one. To me, these all seem pretty close in their execution, but none of them seem to have really caught on. Why?

No, really, I have no answers.  Why do you think?

Do you remember me talking about Firebug for Firefox a year ago?

Okay, I'll grant you, that was some time back, so let me just refresh your memory.  Firebug is an add-on for Firefox that lets you do web/HTML/CSS design and editing from within the browser.  It's pretty slick, really, and it's well worth checking out if you haven't already.  Well, now WebMonkey, the best damn HTML/web development resource since the HTTP protocol, has a list of the Five Best Firebug Extensions .

So, now, an extension has extensions. Cool.
Hey, I know I wander pretty far afield, but this is still the Diary of a Network Geek!

"The only sea without a shore..."

I feel stuck. And, honestly, even as I write that, it feels ungrateful.
It's not as if I'm in a bad place or anything, but I feel a little stuck. Unable to move forward and equally unable to move back. I suppose part of it is just the time of year. The new year has just rolled by and I feel like I'm in the same place I was last year. That's not true, of course, but it feels that way. I mean, I've got the same job and I'm still not in a long-term, intimate relationship and I'm still not being more productive, really. But, it's not a bad place to be stuck, either. I have lots of close friends and I got a raise when a lot of people are losing their jobs. And, when I was married, it really wasn't all it was cracked up to be.

Still, I feel like life is a little, well, empty. I just haven't added much to my life this past year. Sure, I've been exercising more and feel better than I have in a long time, physically. And, I have been trying to be more creative via photography, but, well, I guess it really bothers me that I've been a whole year and don't see much, if any, progress in my life. I'm just sort of treading water. Stuck.

Maybe I just need a couple of projects to work on. Something to work toward that will stretch me and my technical skills at work. Something that will push my creative skills in my private life. And, I keep trying to not think about relationships, since, well, everyone keeps telling me that when I stop looking that's when I'll find one. Not that that has ever made any sense to me, frankly, but, well, the way I've been doing it hasn't worked too well, so, certainly I've got nothing to lose by not trying at all! Surely, it couldn't go any worse!

Well, anyway, the past couple weeks, I've just been unmotivated to do anything much or write a lot for the blog and, hopefully, this post explains a little about why.

Because I know you all can't decide which book to read until I write one.

No, seriously, I know my faithful readers would be all over any book I actually slid past an editor to get published, because you're great people. But, since I spend most of my time toiling away in a hellish server room, that's not going to happen any time soon. So, until it does, here's another website to help you pick what book to read.

This one is called Whichbook. And, unlike last week's book picker, it doesn't rely on you entering a book which you've already read. No, with this site, you can choose moods and content and all that sort of thing on a series of sliders. When you're done, you'll have a suggestion of which book to read. Hopefully, it'll be something new.