Vital Vector

Apple Doesn't Understand Kindle

2010-01-30T16:00:04Z

Apple's big iPad announcement last week has been sinking in for the past few days, and I've concluded that the iPad sucks. I could live without multitasking if push notifications work (with only one exception). The lack of a camera and the silly USB and SD card adapters were dumb design choices, but the iTunes syncing bothers me the most. iTunes is slow, bloated, and horrible.

And the iTunes syncing proves to me that Apple really doesn't understand what makes Amazon's Kindle so great. Yes, the eInk screen is awesome for reading in direct sunlight (except in temperatures below 41° F), and yes, the free wireless 3G service is a nice perk. But there's one reason why the Kindle is a perfect gift for anyone in the family:

Kindle owners never need to connect their device to a computer.

Until this is true of the iPad too, I don't see it mimicking the success of the Kindle.

Losing Weight: Simpler Than You Think

2009-07-26T06:21:07Z

Science is an amazing thing. A slew of studies released over the past year have simplified weight loss. Stop worrying about carbs, meals after 8 PM, miracle pills, or colon cleansing. None of that makes a significant difference. Even exercise alone is not an effective strategy for weight loss, since people tend to eat more after exercise. (Exercise has other health benefits, so keep the gym membership.)

But reducing your calorie intake works. Every pound of extra weight equals roughly 3500 calories. To burn off that energy, you need to maintain a calorie deficit. If you eat just 500 fewer calories than you burn everyday, you'll lose about a pound each week.

That's easier than you might think. Most individuals burn between 1600 and 2500 calories daily, depending on age, weight, and activity level. Maintain a journal for a few days of everything you put in your mouth. You might be surprised by the calories in your favorite foods, and snacks between meals can really add up.

I found that most of my extra calories came from soda, office snacks, large portions of pasta, and those large tortillas at Chipotle. Back in January, I switched to water, diet soda, only one afternoon snack, smaller portions, and Chipotle bowls. I'm 40 pounds lighter now.

Windows 7 On Sale

2009-06-26T08:09:34Z

Pre-orders for Windows 7 went up yesterday. If you expect to upgrade an XP or Vista computer anytime in the next year, pre-order Windows 7 before July 11 to save half off retail. Home Premium (super-duper edition?) is only $50.

Mac and Linux remain my environments of choice for real work, but Windows 7 does look promising. I definitely expect to upgrade my gaming rig at some point, and $50 feels right for a Windows upgrade.

In other news, I'm having too much fun with my iPhone to write about it. More later...

iPhone 3.0 Hits

2009-06-18T21:22:55Z

Apple unleashed the 3.0 software update upon iPhones and iPod Touches everywhere yesterday. I've been enjoying all the new goodies, particularly search, copy and paste, and landscape keyboards, which you can read about elsewhere.

This iPod feature caught me by surprise! Apple finally revamped the podcast playback controls, eliminating the repeat, genius, and shuffle buttons that made little sense for audio podcasts. The new left button e-mails an iTunes link to the podcast. The center button leaps backwards thirty seconds, an operation I've frequently needed with audio content. The right button doubles or halves the playback speed, a feature I've quickly come to love. The position slider has been revamped too: while seeking to a new position, I can slide my finger down the screen to reduce the speed of movement. This makes finding a particular spot in a long podcast tremendously easy!

Expect my next several posts to be about the iPhone. My favorite IM client has yet to be updated for push events and my new iPhone 3G S is sitting in a box in Kentucky. I'm quite excited to finally be retiring my well-worn nerd taxed model.

Attention California Voters!

2009-05-30T00:00:11Z

California voters, if you want to see a proposal to restore marriage equality in 2010, sign the petition. We'll need 600,000 signatures to place it on the ballot.

Civil Rights Are Amendable

2009-05-26T19:20:13Z

This morning the California Supreme Court announced a decision in favor of Proposition 8. Under the twisted web that is our state constitution, voters may "amend" the document with a simple majority, whereas a two-thirds vote of the legislature is required to "revise" the constitution. All but one justice agreed that Proposition 8 constituted an "amendment" and not a "revision."

This is a huge blow to civil rights in the state. Not only has a 50% majority succeeded in stripping a civil right from a minority group, but the State of California has officially sanctioned a conservative Christian definition of marriage. This is a clear violation of the Free Exercise and Equal Protection Clauses of the U.S. Constitution.

I think churches should be free to define marriage within their congregations however they please. There are churches where gay marriage is accepted. They have just as much right to exercise that conviction under the law. The government and the state constitution is no place for this debate.

To Boldly Go

2009-05-09T16:10:24Z

If you haven't seen the new Star Trek yet, go. Now. It's amazing.

I haven't enjoyed a movie this much since The Return of the King.

Executive Pay Needs To Decrease

2009-04-01T01:12:07Z

Kathy M. Kristof wrote an intriguing column in the Los Angeles Times this week. She asserted that CEOs need to cut their pay to save capitalism. The reason? Stockholder trust is eroding.

Kristof offered James D. Sinegal as the model example. As the CEO to Costco, Sinegal earns a salary of $350,000 and a bonus of no more than $200,000. Sinegal has refused raises, and Costco's board feels Sinegal is underpaid.

As investors lose trust in the management of publicly traded companies, investor capital will shift from stocks that pay a share of the profits (and losses) to company bonds that carry a contractual rate of return.

A Note to Drivers of West Los Angeles

2009-03-01T05:52:09Z

To the drivers of West Los Angeles,

Given my past experience sharing the road with you, I'm not sure why I expected you to know this, but when the power goes out, dead stop lights are stop signs. That means you should wait your turn, yielding to the vehicle on your right. It also means that you cannot follow the vehicle in front of you into the intersection!

Earlier today I witnessed dozens of vehicles running a dead light. Were these drivers even looking for a green? Who taught these people to drive? The sane drivers were backed up, confused, and honking.

To be fair, I see someone blatantly run a red light almost weekly here.

I don't think anyone in California understands four-way stops. Most drivers will enter an intersection with the vehicle opposite them. That works fine for simple intersections. In a large intersection with heavy left turn traffic, that system quickly breaks down. If everyone observed clockwise right-of-way, then three directions could share the same intersection simultaneously. It's that much more efficient.

SSH Tip: Hash Known Hosts

2009-02-21T06:23:22Z

As any user of SSH is aware, the first time you connect to a remote host, OpenSSH caches the server's public key in ~/.ssh/known_hosts. If the server's private key ever changes, SSH will raise an ugly error alerting you of the risk that an untrusted third-party could be intercepting your new connection.

Unfortunately, the known_hosts file represents a small security risk. It contains a convenient list of all servers to which you connect. An attacker who gained access to your password or unencrypted private key would simply need to iterate down the list until your credentials were accepted.

OpenSSH can optionally hash the server names in known_hosts. This renders the file useless to prying eyes without impairing SSH's ability to check hosts against the list. Enabling this feature and hashing your existing known_hosts file is easy!

Add the parameter "HashKnownHosts yes" to your ~/.ssh/config.
Run "ssh-keygen -H".

Below the fold, I included a handy shell script that accomplishes the same thing.

One final consideration is your shell history storing your ssh commands. It's easy to configure bash to forget these. Just set HISTIGNORE="ssh *:scp *:sftp *" in your ~/.bashrc.

#!/bin/sh

# Add parameter to existing config, if any
echo "HashKnownHosts yes" > ~/.ssh/config.new
if [ -f ~/.ssh/config ]; then
  grep -v "^[[:space:]]*HashKnownHosts" \
      ~/.ssh/config                     \
      >> ~/.ssh/config.new
fi
mv ~/.ssh/config.new ~/.ssh/config

# Hash existing known hosts
ssh-keygen -H
rm ~/.ssh/known_hosts.old

Friends, Stop Embarassing Yourself

2009-02-19T09:27:47Z

Over the past month, I've had several friends message me on MSN Messenger with something like this:

"check out these awesome pics from the awesome party LOL
http://www.gone-wild-patry-pics.com"

When I follow the link in the message, I'm greeted with a prompt for my MSN account information. The page doesn't look reputable at all, and the "terms of service" are plastered all over the bottom.

By providing MSN account information, a visitor grants this company permission to log into the MSN account and send advertisements to everyone on the buddy list. Among other interesting clauses in the "terms of service," the company also claims the following.

"... the right to change the terms of use / privacy policy at any time without notice."
"... this agreement shall prevail if there is any conflict between this agreement and the terms of use you accepted when you signed up with MSN."
"... TST Management, Inc is NOT agreeing to MSN's terms of use and therefore not bound by them."
"You expressly consent to the exclusive venue and personal jurisdiction of the courts located in the Republic of panama for any actions arising from or relating to this agreement."

The most entertaining aspect of all this is that I know exactly which friends fell for this trick. I would encourage anyone who provided login credentials to this fradulent web site to change your MSN password immediately! Your friends will thank you.

Remapping Mac Modifier Keys

2009-02-18T06:23:40Z

I'm sure most Mac users encounter situations when they're forced to use a Windows keyboard. In my case, I attach a Mini and ocassionally my MacBook to a KVM switch shared by Vista, Ubuntu, and a Windows keyboard.

Up until now, I've just dealt with the fact that Windows keyboards switch the Option and Command key locations. I've trained my brain to use the Windows key rather than the key immediately adjacent to the space bar when I need Command. Previous versions of Mac OS had a feature that remapped the modifier keys, but this was a global setting that remapped all keyboards whether they be Windows or not.

I was pleasantly surprised when I discovered this dialog under Leopard's keyboard system preferences.

That new drop down list at the top lets me create mappings for all keyboards or specific keyboards, identiifed by their USB device name. Very nice, Apple!

Why Is File Sharing Still So Difficult?

2009-02-12T16:48:47Z

I wanted to do something very simple over the weekend. I wanted to set up my Windows Vista computer to backup automatically to a drive shared on the network by my Mac Mini. In this day and age, digital information has become so important in our everyday lives that one would hope this is now relatively straightforward, right?

First, let me say that I can accomplish this in my sleep on any non-Windows computer. I work, live, and play on unix operating systems. I know how to configure key pairs and schedule a regular cron job to rsync files over a secure ssh connection. These technologies have a significant learning curve, but they work consistently and reliably.

My first hurdle was Leopard's horrible SMB support. Enabling Windows file sharing on Leopard confronts the user with an intimidating dialog box that warns about storing passwords in a less secure manner. The password on my primary account is important, so I decided to create a separate backup user. Unfortunately, Leopard "sharing only" accounts don't appear on the list of accounts available for Windows file sharing. I had to create a full user account, complete with a home directory.

The next hurdle was logging in from Vista. As I discovered after a solid half hour of tinkering, Leopard's SMB support only accepts the account's full name, not the abbreviated short version.

Vista comes with a backup tool that only supports network backups to Windows file shares. Once I had file sharing with the Mac working, I happily pointed the backup tool at that location. Windows complained about not having "full access," and Leopard doesn't have any option for enabling a higher level of privileges beyond "read & write." So there goes that idea. My Vista computer doesn't store anything more valuable than saved games and screenshots. It's not worth the time to hack something together for automatic regular backups.

Microsoft, how about adding support for backing up to SFTP or WebDAV? These are not new file sharing protocols, and they work cross-platform!

And to be fair, Apple's Time Machine is equally frustrating when backing up to non-Apple computers over the network. Time Machine relies on specific features of HFS+, including a hack in Leopard to enable hard links for directories, so network backups must create an HFS+ disk image on the remote computer.

Take My Wife!

2009-02-06T22:06:48Z

I recently came across an interview with Tim Minchin, and I think he's great! Unfortunately, he isn't on tour in the United States this year.

California: Flirting With Bankrupcy

2009-01-28T20:25:23Z

I hope our representatives in Washington will take a lesson from the financial problems that California faces. Our state, burdened with the expenses of our massive education and health care systems, is teetering on the edge of insolvency. Our State Controller, John Chiang, has been forced to delay payments to guarantee that the state has enough cash on hand to meet high priority obligations. Among other things, $2 billion in tax refunds will be delayed for 30 or more days.