I have my brand new Shuttle PC setup with a Sony U500 DVD+/-R/W drive. So I worked on my Christmas home video on Vegas Video 4, and ready to try to burn to my very first DVD+R/W with DVD-Architect. Unfortunately it won't work. It is having some programing writing the DVD prep file to the harddrive. So I am installing the MyDVD software that came with the Sony drive and see if I will have better luck.
Moving Sale
Just setup my Moving Sale list as a MovableType powered blog. It works quite well. I still need to cleanup the template and stylesheet, but it is good enough for now. Thanks, MovableType !Now go buy something will ya !
Business Use of wiki
Wiki is open source information. That is my definition. When applied to the business world, I say wiki is open source documentation. Wiki is invented at the Portland Pattern Repository, a website and database for software design patterns. You can read its full history there. In general wiki is a web site for simple, open and unrestricted collaboration. One of the main characteristics of a Wiki is that there is no page ownership. Anyone can change anything, including deleting things. My first encounter with wiki was at the Zope site. I did not like it. It was confusing, the quality of the content was not always good. Sometime in October 2002, my sysAdmin showed me that he was using a Python wiki clone, MoinMoin, for his own documentation. MoinMoin was written in Python, my favorite scripting and text manipulation language. Because it is web based, it is always there and it makes writing documentation simple. I played with it for a little bit, and decided to roll it out for the entire company to see if it will help us document our knowledge.
A side note, two technology that I love, Python and Wiki, were both introduced to me via Unix SysAdmins. Python was introduced to me many years ago by another SysAdmin that was working with me. What does this mean? Unix Sys Admin have good taste? and/or Unix SysAdmin has too much time to surf the web and find interesting stuff? (Sorry Ben).
Enviornment Before
First, some background: We currently have two internal web sites. One was maintained mostly by our internal web master. Mostly because we don't have a full time web master anymore. The content has slowly gone out of date. The content was for the general corporation.
The other site is a simple user directoried web site on a Apache server. Each person has their own directories. There are reasonable content on these sites, and the information is almost all technical, maintained by developers themselves. The problem is that you have to either edit HTML directly on Linux, or use a PC tool and manage with FTP. Even our developer finds that a little tedious. Therefore there is little incentive to maintain the data on that site. And besides one or two brave and technically savy product manager, there are little business level content on that site.
Wiki deployment I deploy a wiki site (powered by MoinMoin) in our Boston office. This office house primarily developers and product development people. At the beginning a few of the techies jumped on it, of course. First interesting observation -- some of the HTML savy developers started to try to format their pages nicely -- which is hard to do with the limited MoinMoin text mark up language. Hence the first advantage of using a wiki instead of a full scale CMS driven website. Once the writers decided that they cannot spend too much time on making things look good,they started to spend time on the actual content.
Looking at just the techie group first, there are two types of people up to the pre-wiki time. Those who like to document their work somewhere (usually on our old internal website), and those who do not want to but do so reluctantly, and those who just don't want to write anything. The group that were writers took to the wiki quickly. The non-writer group remains off line. The relunctant writers are the one that changed most. They started to create more pages.
As times go by the non writers started to contribute also. Part of this is social and process pressure. Since more discussions and documentations are on the wiki now, sometimes one do not have a choice but to participate. It gets really interesting when ''wiki'' becomes a word in our normal business discussion.
Technical Hurdle At least with MoinMoin, the wiki that we use, there are some technical difficulties that prevent even the technical people from using it effectively. The number one problem is attachment or file sharing. Often, part of the information shared is in the form of a PDF or a spreadsheet. Unfortunately MoinMoin's way of attaching files and referencing them is difficult.
Social Impact First, "wiki" becomes a commonly used term in meetings. "It's on the wiki, go read it", or "please put it up on the wiki", or "it's NOT on the wiki !" are the common phrase.
Some Links
DSL and ISDN Update
First, it is official. I won't get DSL service here. Remember that I ordered the service, only to have a non working line from the start. Today they told me that "there is problem at the pole, and they would have to rewired the neigbourhood", so I will not be getting DSL. Read the entire story here On another front, I have a business account ISDN at home also. That line went dead two evenings ago. I called them last night, and the dispatch a tech to my house, and fixed it within 24 hours. This is the hidden secret -- get a business grade line ! The problem was that the splice was loosen at the "box" outside, which is underground. I think the snow plow shoke it loose. But it's fixed and I am back to my 128K data line.
Apple Powerbook and Safari Browser
Guessed what? I am seeing Safari browsers hitting my site on my server logs. Cool ! Makes me want to run out and buy the new Powerbooks. I actually like the 12 inch model. The 17 inch is too heavy. Only wished they put in the cool keyboard backlight on the 12 inch model as well. That would have made me buy that thing. Instead I just order a new Shuttle SB51G, shoebox machine as my new digital video editing machine. Everyone seems to be out of the Sony U500 DVD -/+ R/RW combo drive right now, so I won't be getting my new toy until a week or two from now.
Digital Video (DV) editing
I caught the DV editing bug end of last year when I decided to create a short film as a fairwell video for some co-workers. having watched all those movies the chance to actually create one is rewarding and fun. It was a fun but painful project largely because of equipment limitation. I had a surplus PIII pc with 6 gig of hard disk space to work with, and used Pinacle System's brand new Studio 8 software. The hardware was slow. I ran out of disk space constantly, and Studio 8 would crash every 30 minutes. But the end result was still good. Now I am starting on my second project, a home movie of our family Christmas gathering. I think this will be a good thing for the family, watching my little nieces openning their presents and having fun. Of course they will be so embarassed by it when they grow up.
I now have a real PC with a P4 2.4 and lots of disk space, but Studio 8 is crashing on me again. I gave up and switched to the much more expensive Vegas Video from Sonicfoundry. I tried their demo version first, and I was impressed enough to go buy it.
Some website that have VV3 info:
DSL update...
Well, today I got the Verizon DSL activated, but not working). Read the entire story here
Telemarketing hell -- Do Not Call Registry
Massachusetts' do not calllist, and, according to the FTC, once the Commission gets Congressional approval for funding, the proposed National Do Not Call Registry will happen... Also, if you want to do something about telemarketer, you may want to read this note to get some tips. This guy sued a telemarketer and got himself $500.
High Speed Internet in Lexington?
I was at the verizon web site a few days ago, and just for fun see if my home now qualify for ADSL, and this time they said yes ! (My house is just about as far from the CO as it is possible in Lexington, 23000+ last time I tried DSL). So I just ordered it online. Do you think it works? Meanwhile, just found out about these few items: The Lexington internet group, and the Arlington Wireless effort.
Update:
Well, I received automated emails on the order, everything looks great. Today, 2003/01/08, I got an email saying the line is activated (two days ahead of schedule), and when I got home, a box from Verizon arrived at my front door. It has a modem, all necessary cables, and instructions and software (for PPPoE). Great news? Of course not. Plug the line in, not syncing up. Called their help desk. Waited on hold for 30 minutes, then the fun really starts:
The phone rep runs through his script:
- Is the phone line plugged in?
- Is there any thing between the cable and the wall jack (to see if I put the filter on the modem line -- no)
- are all other lines have filter installed? -- I told him I unplugged all the phones, which is not true...
- can you try a different jack? sure
- are you on a cellphone? yes
- (this is a funny one), the cellphone may be interferring, can you stand as far as possible and see if it start working? -- sure
- ok. I will open a trouble ticket and send someone to check the lines (at last!!)
Background: My house is at the edge of town, and the telco lines are routed through a old section of town, so it should be too far from the CO for DSL to work. I had a SDSL line for about 6 months, and it never stayed up for more than a few days at a time.
My First million dollar idea for 2003
Include Instant Message clients in printers and other devices that are likely to be on the network.
Fujitsu Tablet PC
I just tried out the tablet PC from Fujitsu. It.... WORKS !! It works very well actually. The hand writing recognition is fast. If you just want to input electronic ink, the ink input feels real as well (using Microsoft Journal application). I can see using this instead of paper for note taking. The tablet itself have all necessary ports, including VGA, USB, IR, built in WiFi, modem and Lan. It comes also with a thin IR keyboard. So if you are travelling with it as a laptop replacement unit (A new term?? You heard it here first) you may bring the tablet and the IR keyboard. One thing that will be a little strange is that you will have to either prop up the tablet or lay it flat on the desk when you are using the keyboard.
digital pen and paper
Why did this Logitech digital pen product slipped through all the media? I saw it first in a PC Connection printed catalog. Visiting the Anoto website confirmed that it is the same technology by Anoto, first written up by Wired. This is a truly innovative idea. I hope it makes it. Maybe I should order one? Sounds like they are a little behind on getting paper printed. Much better than tablet PC, right? nothing beats the feeling of real pen writing on real paper. Maybe Micorsoft is killing all the press with their tablet PC announcements. Or they are waiting for next weeks' Comdex? Read the wired article for a description of the actual technology. It is very clever. This is one product that actually let the computer does the hard work and let the human does what's normal, i.e. writing pen on paper. The pen optically record where the pen is writing, and the paper has printed on it very small dots that make each location unique. Think of the pen reading X/Y cordinates from the paper. The article says that the pattern printed on the paper has such a large address space that each type of paper/form can be uniquely identified.
Bringing Design to Software
Read the excepts from this book.The first chapter reprints Mitch Kapor's "A software design Manifesto". A 11 years old paper that is still relevent, and sadly un fulfilled today. One funny quote is: "everyone I know (including me) feels the urge to throw that infuriating machine through the window at least once a week. (And now, thanks to recent advances in miniaturization, this is now possible.)"
He also draws analogy from building architects in defining what is software designer. The three fundementals of architecture, quoted often in different translation of Vitruvius, is mentioned: the triple essence: strength, utility, and aesthetic effect. Sir Henry Wotton (1568 - 1639) quaintly changed this to, "commodity, firmness and delight."
wiki for work
My first encounter with wiki was at the Zope site. I did not like it. It was confusing, the quality of the content was not always good. Then a few weeks before, my super sysadmin showed me that he was using a Python wiki clone for his own documentation. Because it is web based, it is always there and it makes writing documentation simple. I played with it for a little bit, and decided to roll it out for the entire company to see if it will help us document our knowledge. Some background -- we currently have two internal web sites. One was maintained mostly by our internal web master. Mostly because we don't have a full time web master anymore. The content has slowly gone out of date. The other site is a simple user directoried web site on a Apache server. Each person has their own directories. There are reasonable content on these sites. The problem is that you have to either edit HTML directly on Linux, or use a PC tool and manage with FTP.
wireless on Linux!
Well, it's 2:40am Sunday morning, and finally I got my SMC wireless card to work with RedHat 7.3 on a IBM T22 laptop. Amazing. There are still some annoyance, like during boot it waits for a long time trying to start eth0 (the onboard ethernet card) while I have the laptop unplugged from the wired network. It also reported that eth1 cannot be started and have to be delayed (probably because the initialization of the card is not completed at this point?) but it works after booting up. To make it work I had to edit /etc/pcmcia/wireless, wireless.opts, etc according to a tech note on SMC support site.
Debian vs RedHat
I could never get X to work well on my Thinkpad T22 with RedHat 7.2. So I've decided to give Debian a try, the latest and greatest, 3.0r0. Jigdo'ed the CD images. Decided to install it on a very old test box first since I have never installed Debian before. Good news is that the installation is reasonably straightforward. Bad news is that I cannot get X to work with my old system, which has a working X running on RedHat 7.2. 20 xfree86 -configure later, I have decided to.... install RedHat 7.3 on the same machine to see what RedHat decided to be a good XF86config-4.... One thing is that Debian 3.0 came with XFree 4.1.x, which is old. I was hoping for 4.2. Also, XFree somehow removed support for "S3" chipset directly? At least that's what I found. This test box is very old and has a Diamond Stealth 64 with S3 765 chipset and 2 Meg of mem. Antique!
Now I got RedHat 7.3 installed on this old machine, and I have a different problem !! It does not find my old NE2000 clone ethernet card. I have to dig around until I read the ethernet how-to on using two ethernet card. It talked about problem with old ne2000 clones. I had to add to the /etc/modules.conf file entry to tell the kernel what's the parameters for the card:
alias eth0 ne options ne io=0x300
Has Apple Computer Made it?
Gateway computer is now running advertisement/comparison to pitch its profile 4 line of slim desktop machines against Apple's iMacs. Have you seen their TV ads? Does this mean iMacs are now a legitimate thread to wintel desktops? That is good news. Looking at the current Microsoft operating system and software licensing, maybe it is time to switch over to the macs and OS X.
Dijkstra Passed away
Read the obituary at U of Texas at Austin. They are also putting all his EWD manuscripts online. These are must reads. I remember at my first class at first year of computing science at Imperial, the professor said, learn to spell Dijkstra. Otherwise you will never pass any exams here. Dijkstra contributed so much pure thinking in the field of computing science. He shall be missed.
A few quotes from him: Aim for brevity while avoiding jargon, and Progress is possible only if we train ourselves to think about programs without thinking of them as pieces of executable code.
Scan you own groceries
I just discovered that my local Shaw's supermarket implemented scan your own groceries. (Or maybe I just have not been to the supermarket for a while)? It's pretty good. Scan your stuff. Slide your ATM card, bag your goods, and be done. Just talk to the machine. One less human encounter eliminated. Good? Bad?
DirecTV.com -- or how not to do a website
I have direcTV. They have a web site with registration feature. I try to sign up. It has such a simple and obvious bug that, well, is unbelievable -- During registration, you enter the usual account number, pick a user name and password, and enter some addition account related data to get validated. I entered one of the other data field wrong. It came back with an error message and let me correct that field -- pretty good. I re-entered the field correctly. However I noticed that the password field is now blanked. I press "submit", the form was accepted, and my registration/online account is setup. Except they have either a null or junk saved as my selected password. Since the "change password", nor the "login" screen accepts a null/blank password, I cannot fix it. To verify it, I try the "send me my password" feature, but it failed with an error. (I bet it try to select the current password from the database but it is null).
Bottom line? Being in the business, how can a retail commercial site like direcTV allow such bug to exists? Think of the business cost. I have to call their customer service, talk to two different reps, before they can reset my password. That's about 5 minutes of their customer service phone time.