Forget Dr Gregory House, watch Doc Martin

In the times of Downton Abbey, let me call your attention to another great British TV Series: Doc Martin. It is a clean (kids friendly) funny and satirical show that also packed with medical knowledge as a side product. It is what Kingdom to Law as Doc Martin to medicine. The show is available streaming on all platforms, Hulu Plus, Amazon and Netflix. I was avoiding the show initially because the show's description made it sounds like it is about a mean character surviving in a small town. I hate show that has mean characters. That's why I can never watch the Office. However after watching Murder in Suburbia, I looked up what other shows Caroline Catz stars in and found Doc Martin (again). Description on wikipedia mentioned that the main character is supposed to be from Imperial College. Well then I have to give it a go.

Four episodes later, I have to say this is one of the best show. If you like high brow humor, English villages, medical terms, people with heart, quirky characters, family friendly, men in suites, this is the show for you.

[AMAZONPRODUCT=B004KVXCB4]

First Week of School

With great anticipation I arrived 5 minutes early for first day of class. First surprise? most people arrived late. Seats quickly ran out as the room was small. Second surprise: lack of laptops. I realized I had the professional meetup/seminar mindset when everyone is typing away, taking notes, back channeling or something else. The professor handed out a color printed copy of the course schedule printed from moodle. There were only four laptops I can see amongst 30+ people. As with must classes, first 30 minutes is spent on housekeeping. Then we broke into small groups to do some brainstorming work. Instinctively I took over as facilitator for the group. Then I realized, on average, the students are a lot less aggressive and participatory then, say even the typical MBA case based classroom. I also forgot that this is a joined class, with a mix of undergrads and grad students. For some of them this maybe their second semester of school. One clear thing is that everyone is pretty bright. Since the course is in Game design for education, we talk a lot about games of all types. And clearly they know games and I learned a thing or two from them in that domain.

Second class - as the class is overbooked, the professor filtered the class down to 20 by second class. It is now more manageable space wise. Still better than meeting in a basement classroom. Now the class is going, it hits me. There are a lot of reading to be done per class. Not to mentioned because this class is very much project based, I see scheduling time with my group a challenge. Until then, it is still a fun, fun class!

IKEA Galant Desk Assembly

If you have to remember one thing, it is "attach the legs to the frame first". These desks are great. We used them in the office. They keep innovating with the product line. For 2011, they have added a new cable tray and a divider that makes them perfect for office setup, instead of just "home" office setup. The dividers are not cheap, but compare to something from steelcase, they are still a steal.

Some tips that are not obvious if you are shopping for the Galant desks:

1. The T legs are the best because they fit inside the foot print of the desk. If you plan on grouping the desks together they will not get into each other's way. Otherwise depending on how high you have the desk height set, the legs may stick out.
2. The T legs unfortunately only comes in grey. I wish they make a shiny steel option.
3. The legs are sold in single pack. So you need to buy two legs for one desk (normally).
4. A nice touch -- the legs come with a little glue on holder for the leg height adjustment hex key.
5. Tip: The big hex key for the leg screw for attaching the leg to the frame is part of the frame's supply.
6. Make sure the frame is the right side up when attaching the legs. See photo
7. It is hard to attach the legs by yourself. I balance the frame on (what else) an existing Galant desk. See photo.

The Galant series is a great line of work desk. Enjoy yours and hope that our tips here help you put yours together.

Back to school, MIT Advanced Study Program

 It has been a long while since I was in school. The part time MBA at Boston University seems like a decade ago (it was). Why am I putting myself through this again? And at a place where most people are smarter than me? I believe, after spending so much time in the industry, I am dying for some academia work. While I am here in Boston, isn't the Institute the place to be?

Orientation

Wednesday was orientation. The ASP office staff couldn't be nicer. They really offer a support system so that us adult students, some doing this part time, can survive the hard work. There are luncheons and dinners socials, copy machines and even office space. Full timers get their own cube. Part timers share. Part of the support reason I think is that many of the students are from overseas. With the eight of us newbies that showed up at orientation, exactly half are from overseas.

Doing Things Differently

MIT does everything differently. January each year is IAP time. So the Spring term starts in February. All the ASP students (or Fellows, as we are called) will return Monday during the day to register for classes with the adviser Dawna. She has been working at MIT for a long time and she is super helpful, super nice and knows pretty much everything. Then class starts the next day. And would you believe it that this is the first year that class registration is partially done online? Last term it was filling in paper forms and walking them between buildings.

While we are on the subject of buildings, of course buildings on campus are numbered, sequentially, from the time they were built. Since building names (as most other college will use) are also just symbolic references, why not numbers? It's shorter. And yes, departments are also numbered, but you know that already.

New and Old Tech

A good part of orientation is spent on IT -- MIT runs a open network. This means that the entire MIT network (MITNet) is not behind any firewall. In a way their solution is good. It is very hard to maintain a central firewall system that works for such a large technology focus university. Instead, MIT uses Kerberos as a way to authenticate each access device to each server. Setting up the all so important Kerberos username and installing all the certificates is not easy if you are not a techie. So Kirky spent a good amount of time explaining the ins and outs of all the IT setup so that we can all get connected.

Getting IDs

Then we are off to get our IDs. I got my student ID at the basement of the Straton center, then back to the ASP lounge and use their computer to get my online ID assigned. Apparently the ID system is a batch process so the user ID will not be fully activated until the next day. Later in the evenings I seems to be able to generate my Kerberos certificates at least. So all is good, now wait for registration day.

Natalia Kills vs Texas

Is it me or these two album covers really are pretty similar?

PK 2011 year end review

I am writing my 2011 year end review in January 2012. A little bit of catching up eh? It was quite a year.

January - Get Healthy

I tried this one year ago but gave up. This time I stuck with it -- Couch to 5K.  What helped? An iPhone app of course. I started in mid January. Done in end of march. Thanks to Nike+ shoes with sensor, I also have a complete history of the progress. I am not a jock. Running is really a fight against determination. At this level no skill is required. Just determination. What kept me from doing this before was the time commitment. As someone who micro manage my own time to squeeze productive time from myself in minutes increment, taking time "off" from the work day, one and a half hour at a time seems unthinkable, before. Now? I am still not 100% committed, but when I run, I do feel the benefits. I slacked off towards the end of the year. As I am writing this In January, I have restarted running regularly again. Mind you, at my last time I am doing a little Short of 5K in 30 minutes. But I will Keep it going.

By the way, Adam Lisagor made a very cool video for this app. Check it out. He also did a video for the book Being Geek. Both are worth watching.

Community Service

This year I have double, tripled or quadrupled  my community work. There is the park across the street, and the local library. Being on the board of both friend's group kept me pretty busy, but it is great to work with a bunch of people who really care about the neighborhood. For the park, I help organized several events. One of them, a community gardening day co-sponsored by the Boston Park's department and Mrs Myers (the organic soap people) got my kids pictures in the local paper. That was not my intend, but they were mighty proud, especially as it was on fathers day. The unfortunate side effect is this fuel M's natural fame seeking tendencies. Now when we go to any of these events she'll ask whether we will end up in the Newspaper again!

A lot of the library's work is about fund raising. We did a paper mailing campaign this year. I do not remember the last time I labeled and stamped so many envelopes. You would think a paper mailing campaign would not work in 2011? It did. We raised quite a bit of money from that. Now you can argue that the public library crowd are more paper centric then most. Perhaps that is true.

Esplanade Playspace

A group of parents, event more determined than me, managed to build a brand new playground on the esplanade. This is no small feat. It says a lot about the calibre of families involved. For the non Boston reader, this is next to the hatch shell where the famous annual Boston Pops fourth of July music and fireworks is held each year. As the key organizers are parents from my kids' school, I offered to help with all the web and online communications. On a relative scale my contribution is small, but it did take a lot of time over the year. The playground opened just before it turned cold. Now the kids go there for recess most days. If you have a chance, go visit it. It really is am amazing playground, I'd say, objectively speaking, the best in Boston to date. M and G rightfully are pretty proud of our involvement also.

Civic Duty

Ask me how I spent my birthday... I spent it with fifteen new friends in a locked room: A Jury room to be exact. I got called and selected as a Jury on a very involved criminal case downtown. It took almost three weeks: 8:30 to 4:30 every weekday. While I don't want to talk too much the case, it was an eye opener. I learnt that:

• it is possible for my clients to have me take a 3 weeks mini vacation (although I spend a lot of late nights catching up)
• the police and state prosecution's work is very hard
• the jury system works (at least in this case)
• and I now know a lot about guns, anatomy with respect to wounds, and urban crime issues.
• what happen in a CSI type TV shows, which I dislike strongly to start, take place in more like 1 year in real live

City Politics

I have never been very interested in Politics. When I don't like something somewhere, I tend to just move. Perhaps it is getting older. Perhaps it is having more responsibilities in general. Perhaps it is having children. I now care a great deal about the local politics, especially the politics in the City of Boston. This is where I live, where I work, and were my children go to school. Almost by chanced, I met Suzanne Lee over the summer. I ended up working on her team on her bid for a City Council seat. We lost by 87 votes. It was that close. And that is why local politics matter. I am ready for the next election in two years. I do not like to loose.

Steve Jobs

Spending my birthday in jury room is nothing compare to the sad news that Mr. Jobs has passed away. Having your hero died on a major birthday of yours is a wake up call. I has been a big fan of his before it was chic to like him. I attended his NeXt unveiling at the Boston Symphony hall October 1988, about 23 years ago. They gave out a wide format poster of the NeXt system that I kept, in it's tube, for many years. In fact I may still have it in storage. I do not remember. I thought of trying to get it autographed at the event but decided against it. I wish I did. I also purchased "Steve Jobs: The Journey Is the Reward", an early autobiography of him way back then. Even then I had to purchased it used because, well I guess he wasn't that famous. But I really agree with his style and ideal, his understanding of design and connections, his uncompromising desire to make a dent in the world.

I have a lot to say about Steve Jobs and I won't do it here. I selected these two pictures of him from many that I think it's fitting to remember him by.

Work Life

Given that much going on you may think that I have retired. On the contrary, this year has been a great year for work also. We really have gain a lot of momentum with our development framework and processes. We worked on a few larger projects and hope to do more next year. This year the Django world definitely have matured a lot and have gain popularity in the start-up world. While Rails may still have more perceived used, the Django population is gaining grounds. What get's thrown in the mix of course is iOS. By next year we may have to get into iOS work whether we like it or not. The latest iOS, XCode and objective-C changes did make iOS development a bit easier.

We also moved office, again! The move was unplanned. The old building and landlord decided to up the rent drastically, and at the same time we didn't really need that much space. As luck would have it, a space that I know of became available. We did loose our Table Tennis table, but I cut my commute down to 45 seconds. Seriously 45 seconds between the two buildings. The new office is also much nicer in quality. Less industrial loft, more glass walls.

Family Life

I have a feeling that I am going to say the same thing every year from this point on. This year, both G and M grown a lot in every way. M particularly has finally gotten a lot more independent. She is even sleeping in her own bed now. It does seem ridiculous that it took so long to get this done, especially comparing to G. But the end result is stunningly good. Towards the end of the year, she has even decided to get rid of the "I am a boy" look. Now she is equally comfortable in the tom boy look and the pink sporty look. While princess dresses are still out, we are at a good balance. G's thinking process has continue to grow. Because of the Scratch club I get to see him interact in school a lot with other students and teachers. He is still on the timid side but he is getting a little better. He has taken up with Chess and he is getting good at it. For the first time, I found him a library book about chess and he actually read through the book and learnt a few things from it.

Looking at both of them with books, it really reaffirms the importance of reading for children. Every so often I remind them -- do you remember a few years ago you cannot read? Think of all this fun you are having now! Partly because public libraries has started to lend Kindle e-books, I got them their own Kindles for Christmas. Now they will have books available to them all the time.

I knew of this great Maker run Summer camp for awhile, but only this year they are (barely) old enough to attend. They had a ball! Geo caching, fishing, making things with LED's and PVC pipes, cooking and soldering. While I taught G soldering just earlier in the year, now they both can do it after I gave M some additional instruction after the camp. Someone said soldering is the gateway skill to engineering. I completely agree. I do not remember whether I started building circuitry only because I see my Dad doing it, or my Dad encouraged me to start. Either way I think I started a little later than M and G. Not much, but a little later.

Conclusion

2011 has been a very eventful year. There are more things then what I can fit into this already long post. Happy 2012 to everyone!

Spin out on 93, live tweeting a car accident

First real mini snow storm in Boston. 8:30 am on a Saturday and I am on my way to a tech seminar. Going 50 mph and traffic was light. Must have hit a patch of ice. The car's skid warning sounded. Yeah I know! Trying to steer out of the spin, but the rear end is coming around. I caught enough of it to not tuned 180, but the driver side still hit the guard rail. It's one of those helpless moments! Insurance, miss the seminar, flashing through my head.

That thought quickly gave way to more immediate attention once the car ended up facing the wrong way on the fast side of the highway with cars coming at me. I backed the car up onto the median strip. At this point there is really nothing between me and on coming traffic. What to do?

I called 911 which got routed to the state police. They said to stay in the car. I am only about 200 yards from an exit, which will help them find me. A tow truck was called. As I am contemplating what to do another truck spun out at the same spot, luckily he stopped before hitting anything, especially not me.

10 minutes later a plow truck comes by. Wished he would be 10 minutes early, but at least he stopped and see if I am ok. Another few minutes later an SUV pulled up. I saw the driver took some pictures with a camera from his car. Turned out he is a state police, maybe on his way to work? He has built in flashers in his car. He put on his bright fluorescent vest and turned on his flashers. Stopped traffic and help me pulled to the safer side of the highway. I told him I already called it in, and he left. He was nice and helpful.

Another 15 minutes later a cruiser pulled up. He wonder if he needed to file a report on any guardrail damage and I told him I don't think there are any. He looked over, and said ok. I think their hands are pretty full at this point. Much later yet another cruise pulled up and traded places with him. So what to do? Start tweeting!

Almost an hour later the tow truck arrived. He asked me where I need to go? And he dropped me at the commuter rail station. So here I am, waiting for the next train, an hour away.

What to do? Write this blog post, on my iPad, post via tethering via the iPhone...

Post Accident Update

A few things that I learnt:

• because I called the police, and they call a tow truck, it is considered a "police tow" and at least in this case the tow yard wanted me to physically go to them to sign a form before they will release the car to my repair shop.
• Since I have AAA -- perhaps I should have called them (still trying to figure this out).

Happy New Year, via AudioBoo

listen to ‘First audio blog post for 2011’ on Audioboo

Upgrading iThoughtsHD to use Dropbox Cloud Sync

iThoughsHD is one of my favorite iPad application. I tell people: when I need to create a mindMap, I will use iThoughtsHD on the iPad rather than to use any desktop applications even when I am sitting at my desk with my MacbookPro. I was really happy when iThoughtsHD v3.0 adds full Dropbox syncing support. Before I used to have to manually save each map to my dropbox folder. When 3.0 is released, there seems to be some bugs and I waited for the next release, 3.1 to upgrade. In short, the new syncing works. But for users like myself, who has already saved a few maps to dropbox, the upgrade setup is not as easy as it sounds. Making it worst is that the instructions on the iThoughtsHD website is confusing. So here are my version of the upgrade instructions:

Instructions to Upgrade to Dropbox

Important: This instructions is for iThoughtsHD users who is already using Dropbox, on a per map basis, to save/backup some maps. The instructions are in several parts:

* Disclaimer: Please read these instructions and try to understand what is going on before attempting to change your maps. You should back up all your maps once before attempting this * Backup instruction (via archive) here.

Part 1: Follow instructions from iThoughtsHD to Creating a Cloud folder (your maps are already in the cloud)

Original instructions on their page, but here are more detailed version:

1. Click on the "Forward/Action" icon forth on the left
2. Select ‘New Cloud folder’
3. Select an existing storage provider  (DropBox if you already are backing up to DropBox)
4. Select the formats you wish to sync (ideally select ITMZ as one of the formats as this gives you a good backup option), optionally click PDF as well so you will have a printable copy
5. Browse to the folder in the cloud where your maps reside and choose ‘Use this Folder’
6. Select ‘Create’. This will enumerate all the maps and folders and download them.

Note: At this point you would have created a "(Dropbox)ithoughts" folder that is automatically syncing (which is good). However, it would have downloaded any maps that are already backed up to that folder. i.e. you have duplicate maps but pointing to a single file on dropbox.

Part 2: Cleanup the duplicate but do not delete them (This is the part that is missing)

We need to first delete all duplicate map references that you had backed up before. Now they exists in two folders on your iPad. Follow these instructions to remove the references that are not in the synced folder, for each of these already backed-up maps. Make sure you are deleting the right maps. These maps should already have a "cloud" icon on the right because they were backed up to the cloud.

1. click on the map button on the top left (looks like a book)
2. click [edit] on the top right inside the pop-up list of maps -- this will bring you to the map edit view, where next to each map you will see a delete icon on the left, and a more [>] icon on the right.
3. click on the delete icon on the left.
4. When it ask you to "delete cloud copy", click cancel (IMPORTANT)
5. This will remove the extra copy referenced outside of your now synced folder.

Part 3: Move the rest of the maps that were not backed up before into the synced dropbox folder

Do this for each remaining map:

1. click on the map button on the top left (looks like a book)
2. click [edit] on the top right inside the pop-up list of maps -- this will bring you to the map edit view, where next to each map you will see a delete icon on the left, and a more [>] icon on the right.
3. click on the more icon [>], you will see a folder (probably Maps) showing on the bottom, with it's own more [>] icon
4. click on the more [>] icon, this will let you change the storage (now syncing) location of this map
5. change the map folder location to the (Dropbox)... folder that was selected earlier, where you are storing and syncing all your maps.

At this point all your maps are in the (dropbox)ithoughts folder. Remember to create any new maps in that folder (or sub folder underneath) going forward.

Good deal on iPad and iPhone compatible headphones, Sennheiser HD218i

Sale alert! Sennheisers are coming up with new models, and their HD218i headphones with three button Apple remote with mic headphones are on sale in many places. The "i" version used to fetch a sometimes $50 premium. Now they can be had for $39. They are great headphones for used in the office with your macs and iPads / iPhones. Or bring them with you to Starbucks as you sip expensive coffee while using their free wifi. The volume and mic control lets you adjust the volume, and use Skype. These are closed headphones which mean they do not leak sound, which is particularly important in an office environment. Sound quality? They are going to be a step up from your standard ebuds. From an audiophile point of view, they are at the lowest bearable end which is a good thing. I bought two, adding to my collections of Grado RS1 and RS2.

Upgrading XCode is a Two Step Process

Always remember, the App Store download of XCode is the XCode Installer. You need to run the installer to upgrade XCode. Confusing, yes. Once you remember, no big deal.

My First CFL Bulb

I installed my very first CFL Bulb in the loft today. It is not that I am not energy conscious, it is that we have  ZWave controlled home lighting system in the Loft. Non of the CFL's, and most of the LED bulbs do not work with electronic dimmers. Only the bathrooms' lights are normal switched lights. So I installed my first 3.7+ years CFL there. Let's see if it last that long. Listening to OnPoint last week, the editor-in-chief Kimberly Kleman said we should keep the receipt and call the manufacturer on it if the bulb fails.

Amazon has a Typo on their Kindle Collections Page

Just thought I would share.

Power of Social Media in Marketing

Three different personal encounter with social media this week reaffirms how powerful social media can be in marketing and brand building:

Twitter for Customer Support

I use Rackspace to host all our web servers for ourselves and our customers. I was playing with their iPad app one afternoon and found a problem. It is not a mission critical error, so I wrote a tweet to them, something like "Hey @rackspace your iPad app is crashing". Within minutes they tweeted me back, asking me to email them with specifics. Soon they both emailed and tweeted me back with a solution. I was happy. Then to top it off they offer to send me a t-shirt! Honestly I would have been very happy just with the speedy response via twitter.

Twitter for Pre Sale Support

I was looking to buy a small messenger bag from Rickshaw Bags as a gift. I wanted to know if a Kindle Touch would fit in their mini zero bag. The dimensions given on their websites are too close. So I tweeted a question to @rickshawbags. Within minutes they answered, via twitter. I placed the order. During the check out process they asked me for my twitter handle.

Twitter for Post Sales Support

This evening, Rickshaw Bags tweeted out to me, with a little custom poem, a pictures of the bags that I ordered, before they are handed off to FedEx. I know they do the picture thing with their customers, but the emotional impact was far greater, positively, than I expected. Remember the Rickshaw Bags are custom made with hand pick color combinations. So seeing the pictures before they ship is a wonderful way to build the customer relationship. These are the first bags I bought from them. If the bags themselves are as good as they are suppose to be, they have hooked me for good.

Conclusion

This level of customer interaction does require someone monitoring the company twitter stream. But I believe it is sure worth it. What a differentiator and relationship builder.

Jury is still out on Damien Hirst's Spot Painting Show

I like modern art. But after reading the new multi-gallery show of Damien-no-more-spot-painting-hirst's news, I have to make this small contribution. Click on the image below to see:

mysql installation on ubuntu failed

We often use wordpress as the CMS for our application's public site. That means we have to install mysql on our rackspace servers. Today the installation process failed several times, with this error message in syslog.

Error:

[shell]

ERROR: 1064  You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near 'ALTER TABLE user ADD column Show_view_priv enum\('N','Y') CHARACTER SET utf8 NOT ' at line 1

[/shell]

I first try to uninstall and reinstall sqlserver but it will not uninstall cleanly. Finally I have to both use apt-get and manually remove some directories to get back to a clean install:

[shell] apt-get purge mysql-server apt-get purge mysql-common rm -rf /var/log/mysql rm -rf /var/log/mysql.* rm -rf /var/lib/mysql rm -rf /etc/mysql # and then: apt-get install mysql-server --fix-missing --fix-broken [/shell]

Then I get a clean (re)install of mysql and it started up.

Kindle Touch Review, from an iPad2 User

Executive Summary

• If you are a serious reader, even if you own an iPad2, buy the Touch.
• If you have a child who loves to read, buy the Touch.

Background

I own an Amazon Kindle 1, aka the White Wedge. I used it quite a bit until the battery stop holding it's charge, and I got an iPad2. I do almost all of my book reading on the iPad2 using the Kindle App (how ironic). However the weight and the glare makes the reading experience sub par. One cool thing that I can do however is to flip between the Kindle App and iThought HD (a mindmapping app) to make notes while I read.

I pre-ordered the Kindle Touch when it was announced and it arrived yesterday. Charged it up in about an hour, and it is ready for use.

Likes

• It is small and light, something that you can "throw" in your bag and have your books with you anywhere, bonus: much lighter than the iPad2
• Page turn delay, which is always an issue with e-ink display, is not bad. Check out the video review I made, basically it is quick enough not to be bothersome.
• The on screen virtual keyboard is also very responsive, meaning you can make notes easily right on the device

Dislikes

These are all minor issues:

• The charging port, which is a micro-USB port, feels loose. I hope it does not break in the future
• The feel of the plastic body is not great. I cannot tell why, but it just does not feel nice, especially compare to Apple products
• Similarly, I which it comes in a sharper color, but then that's what cases and covers are for
• no landscape viewing mode (at least for now) -- I do not find this to be a big problem, but people using the Kindle for reading personal PDF may find that an issue
• When you click a "button", it does not "flash" -- so there is no visual feedback of a button being pressed. This is something that, say Apple, will never let go. They should either turn the button dark for a moment or have audible feedback, considering there will likely be a delay until the action is taken. (Note: The keyboard has this "flash/dark" feature. Only buttons in dialog boxes do not.

For Video Review click here to see my video on Amazon.

More Tips and Issue

Amazon Account Management

We use the Kindles within the entire family. One question is whether to use one single Amazon account for all content? Or split them up into adults vs kids accounts. This is a problem that would be solved if Amazon allows a easy transfer of content between accounts, but they do not. This is how the "book" metaphor breaks down. We are not allowed to give our books away. Since we may want to read each other's books, we choose to use a single amazon account. As a result, we need to:

• disable auto-syncing so that two people can read the same book at different speeds without all devices automatically jumping to the furthermost point
• use collections to organize a larger than necessary set of books

Listening to Music from iTunes

I am a Mac user and all my music are stored within the iTunes / Apple ecosystem, as DRM free Apple Lossless format files. the Kindle only support MP3s. So I need to convert any music that I want on the Kindle into MP3 files. iTunes has this feature but it may not be obvious.

Kindle Touch for Kids

The Kindle Touch is a great device for kids who read.

Final Thoughts

Summarizing the bigger points regarding the e-book and digital living marketplace:

• Amazon should allow ownership transfer of e-books. This is solved in the music world by the removal of DRM in music files.

Itunes Music Match Resource Usage

My main  music library is on my 2011 Mac Mini, 2.3GHz 8G ram Core i5 CPU. Right now it is half way matching my 9000+ songs. Looking at the activity monitor, it is using up one entire CPU, with 35 threads and about 500 Meg of real memory. I assume the matching process is some sort of checksum computation and then a network query, which is why it is CPU intensive but not network intensive.

Memorializing 11/11/11 using Apple Products

At 10:59 this morning my kids decided they want to do something special at 11:11:11 11/11/11. 12 minutes later a non cropped version of this picture showed up on our facebook wall. How do I do it?

1. Find a free clock app for the iPad and install it
2. switch on our Apple TV feeding into our main TV
3. run the Clock app and turn on AirPlay Mirroring
4. get the kids positioned
5. take a few pictures using the iPhone4S
6. Once we have the right picture,
7. go to the iPad photo stream which has already pulled down the picture from the iPhone
8. do a quick crop and enhancement (our loft is too sunny and it messes up the contrast)
9. run the Facebook app on the iPad to post the picture

All in 12 minutes. Thank you Steve!

iPhone Day Light Savings Bug strikes again November 2011

If you have your phone's date and time settings set to "automatic", meaning it will automatically determine your time zone, you would be one hour early to your appointments today! For some reason, if you set your timezone yourself then the phone gets the day light savings change correctly. See the two screenshots I took flipping the automatic switch back and forth.