Essential Blogs
Tolerance
"Being an orchestral musician means you have to express yourself to the utmost while simultaneously listening and responding. That's an important skill for conflict resolution - and for life". So speaks Daniel Barenboim. read more »
The Observer vs The Visionary
For some reason, I felt attracted to re-read 'Ask and It Is Given' by Esther and Jerry Hicks. Those of you who are familiar with these authors' work on The Law of Attraction will recognise the irony in my statement :0) read more »
Changing Change
Having just come back from a lovely pub lunch with my hubby, I was struck by a thought: change was something I had always made numerous assumptions about. This sudden 'revelation' led me to explore the change territory further.
This is what I had hitherto assumed about change: read more »
First Official Day of Solar
And here is a graph from PG&E showing how much electricity we used over the last couple years. It seems we use close to 1,000 kwh per month. The panels are putting out a bit more than that right now, but will generate less in the winter. Of course when the Tesla arrives, we'll be using a bit more electricity, depending on how much I drive it.
Silent Night
Last night I forgot to take my medication. That's a rare occurrence and, as a result, I found myself fully awake at 2.00pm. I knew something wasn't quite right because I didn't have my familiar 'drugged' feeling. I didn't feel woozy and I could move without stumbling about like a drunk person. I got out of bed and walked down our two flights of stairs to the kitchen to correct my 'mistake' and take my tablets. Suddenly, something struck me: the house was dark and quiet. read more »
Slipping Standards
Let me be honest here: I often feel frustrated by all the things I can no longer do. I feel like a useless lump on a regular basis and I catch myself getting on my own nerves more often than I care to admit. Having said that, there is humour in every situation and I am amused by the new standards I have been forced to adopt.
My new yardstick for achievement isn't what it used to be, that's for sure!
These days, I feel I have something to be really proud of if: read more »
Awareness vs Mindfulness
My counsellor J has just started studying for a qualification in CBT - Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. My psychiatrist has referred me for CBT so I am very interested in it, both from a personal perspective and from a professional one. There is a very long waiting list for CBT within psychiatric care so this is yet another good opportunity for me to exercise patience... read more »
Back to Blogging
I have recently returned from a convalescence break in France where my parents (yes, I am lucky to still have my mother and my father) spoiled me rotten, not to mention my sister-in-law who is so generous with me I can hardly believe it. On top of all that, I also managed to see my beloved brother (who travels a lot so he is hard to catch) and my two treasured nephews. Lovely, lovely, lovely! read more »
Solar Guard Up and Running
Looks like we're generating some power here in San Carlos. Got the panels installed last week. Solar City has this very cool page where you can track your solar panels. They call it Solar Guard. Sweet.
First 20 Panels
tomorrow? Only SolarCity knows.
Solar panels
Installing AT&T DSL without the Software
At first I hoped that the software only worked on PCs and that there would be some non-software way to activate my service. No such luck. The CD had software for the Mac and the PC.
I then found this article that describes how to get going without the software. Essentially you just need to get to the right website and register for your foo@att.net account and then use that login and password to configure your modem.
To configure the modem you can simply connect it directly to your computer with the supplied ethernet cable and point your favorite browser to the IP address of the router.
Free WiFi at Starbucks
After living in Vietnam, this seems very American to me. In Vietnam, the WiFi is just free. Sure, the speeds suck but the hassle is minimum. Most cafes don't make you register at all. (Highlands Coffee in Saigon Centre used to make you register, but they seem to have given this up.) Leave it to an American to make a complex system like this.
I am amazed that in my first 5 days back, I now have three AT&T accounts. One for my mobile phone, one for my home phone and DSL, and now one for my Starbucks WiFi.
I did notice that Starbucks seems to be running both AT&T and T-Mobile hotspots. At least all those suckers who signed up for the tres cher T-Mobile accounts can keep using them at Starbucks, for now.
Comcast Sucks (Still)
I called AT&T to get DSL service. The AT&T rep was amazingly polite. She was able to get me $150 in cash back incentives. This more than covers the $40 activation fee and $49 DSL modem. With AT&T there is no installer. They drop ship you a modem and you plug it into your phoneline.
Sure, I'll have to live with 3mbs service intead of 16mbs service. However, if my past experience with Comcast is any indication, the hours of waiting for them to install or repair my service doesn't make up for the difference in bandwidth.
Supernova 2008
It was a bit of a CMU reunion. I also ran into Nick Thompson who has also done some interesting things with tessellations.
TextMate Git Bundle
I'm using git to locally commit changes to my code base, and occasionally I push the current branch to github so I have a remote copy just in case something bad happens to my local branch.
This is all just in time for my big plane ride tomorrow. I'll be able to actually do some development on the plane, while actively updating my git repository along the way. Nice.
Crazy World of Windows
Tonight I spent an hour or so trying to get my old XP laptop working with my Apple Airport Extreme base station. For some reason it would get stuck at acquiring network address and never connect to the WiFi base station.
It would work fine without the encryption, but I just don't roll that way. You won't catch me with my encryption down, especially with a Windows box on the network.
At any rate, it turns out that if you set your WPA2 password to have exactly 16 characters in it, then the XP box can connect. Note that the Apple computers and iPhones on my network have no trouble connecting with WPA2 passwords less than 16 characters long. This sounds crazy but it was easy enough to test, and sure enough, it works. So I now have a 16 character WPA2 password on my WiFi network. I suppose that's at least more secure than the shorter one I was using before. Maybe Windows really does encourage more security after all. :-)
Amazon MP3 Downloads Rock
My daughter just got a new Samsung phone and this morning we spent some time putting songs on it. A lot of the stuff she wanted I had in my iTunes library from CDs that I've ripped over the years. There were a couple of new songs that she wanted. iTunes had them but only in protected AAC format. It was then that I remembered the Amazon MP3 Download store. The selection is great, the price is right, and no DRM. I tried it a few months ago. The selection seemed pretty slim and the download manager for the Mac didn't work. Both of these problems seem to have been solved.
Besides the three songs she wanted, I ended up buying a few full albums. It turns out she wanted Barracuda from Heart. I ended up buying the entire Greatest Hits album. (I'm listening to Crazy on You right now. Wow, it takes me back). It took me a second to figure out why my daughter would want Barracuda. It's one of her favorite songs to play in Guitar Hero on the Wii. I remember listening to this when I was in grade school and staying over at my friend Michael McTall's house. I'm pretty sure he had the vinyl album but it might have been a cassette. Now she'll remember it from her year in Vietnam and playing it on the family Wii with her brother!
Linus Speaks on Git
I was a subversion fan most recently but I found it annoying that I can't check in code or do diffs when working in a disconnected mode. I try to check code in frequently since my code tends to veer off in wild tangents. It's nice to be able to easily scrap a tangent and go back to something that was working 15 minutes ago. For that to work, I need to check code in every 15 minutes or so. This is fine if you're working in an environment where you always have access to the source code repository. Unfortunately for me, I'm working in a world where I don't know if I will be able to access the Internet from moment to moment. You know, the joys of living in Vietnam. :-)
So with git it's possible to have a local version of the repository and then easily sync back up with another version somewhere else. Currently I have three repositories. One on a server in my San Carlos house, one on a machine hosted at Rackmounted, and another at github.
So for your viewing pleasure, here's a talk by Linus Torvalds on git.
[Note: I finally got around to watching the whole thing. It's pretty funny to see someone go to Google and call them stupid. Didn't realize Linus was so egotistical. Must have been a fun visit for everyone.]
Grief, Sadness & Depression
When many people talk to me about depression, they actually talk about something else. They talk to me about hurt, pain, despair, the healing power of time passing. In short they talk to me about grief. They talk to me about sadness. I do my utmost to stay civil on the inside but inside my blood boils. read more »