A co-worker has been working on a reporting tool to allow a Mac user to get reports from Time Machine whenever there’s a failure in the backup. Failure messages occasionally come up when Time Machine runs, but it never says what folder, what file or really what kind of failure occured. Which is not what you want if you are absolutely depending on the data being recoverable via Time Machine. It’s not bulletproof and it will lull you into complacency once you have it up and running. I tend to agree that a belt and suspenders approach is best. I’ve read countless articles saying Disk Clones are the best, and on the other side, Incremental Backups are most accurate (in terms of having the latest version of a file) and more efficient with disk space (no need to duplicate the system folder again right?) With the cost of Western Digital My Books dropping all the time, you could purchase two separate USB2 Lifebooks, use a disk cloning utility for one drive, Time Machine for the other. Then you would have a bullet proof backup scheme. One reader commented in this article that off-site backup is necessary as well, so include that as the third leg of your backup triad.
Since errors and failure can happen in any backup system, we recommend that if you have the available resources (namely, spare external hard drives) that you set up dual, independent backups, and, in doing so, take advantage of more than one way of backing up your system. This will prevent any errors in a backup system from propagating to subsequent backups.
One strongly recommended solution that we advocate is to have both a snapshot-based system such as Time Machine in addition to a bootable clone system as well using a software package such as SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner. Doing this will ensure you can both boot and access your most recently changed files in the event of either data loss or hardware failure.
Specifically what is it about CSS that drives me crazy? I am the most evil of ancient dead wood. I am an HTML table man. I got by using tables and got on with my life. I never questioned what I did. I co-worker began beating the drum of usability and web standards about 5 years ago and eliminated tables from his web designs and re-designs. I clung to tables every time somebody pitifully ask me, “Could you make a website for me?”. Usually it was no more than a two cell table to enforce a two column style layout. Picture and text both in their respective cells. Nothing complicated our out of control.
The day of reckoning is now, I am finally “learning” how to use CSS to enforce the old 2 column style web page I always would get asked to make for people. That’s right simplicity in it’s most essential form. But here’s the rub, you absolutely need to know what you are doing. You need a guide to help you navigate the idiosyncracies and vagueries of the CSS Box model and CSS Layout algorithms. What’s that?!
Even at this late stage in the evolution of CSS, HTML, CSS2, XHTML and CSS3 and beyond there’s no tag, no markup, no code that will let you express this simple idea:
Create 2 columns (picture goes on left, text goes on right)
No, in fact what I’m learning from Eric Raymond’s book written under the aegis of Lynda.com is you need to know how the CSS box model including margins, and padding interact to force the web page to render as you intend it to. While creating a DIV element is stragithforward and having DIVs sit comfortably next to one another (like those old 2 cell tables) getting them to render correctly as the web browser grows and shrinks is tricky.
On page 131 of CSS Web Site Design, Eric Raymond states (pull quote indicating use of padding in the #content DIV and the negative margin for the #sidebar DIV). This kind of precision with rendering the DIVs is absolutely necessary to replicate the old HTML table formatting. But the workaround, or magic or trick to it all is reading or learning from someone else the fact that a DIVs width is determine by it’s stated width + the margin. If you set the margin to be a negative (which is allowed) the browser effectively subracts that amount from the stated width. When the two numbers add up to -1, the web browser ‘ignores’ the DIV and lets it do whatever it wants. In this example that Eric Raymond uses the sidebar DIV pops up to the same height as the content DIV. Previously, the sidebar had to sit all the way to the right, until the browser go to small, then it would suddenly pop-down below it’s neighbor. With a negative width, the browser doesn’t see the sidebar div and leaves it alone, it doesn’t popdown, it stays right where it is.
The other half of this equation is to leave generous amounts of padding in the content DIV. The giant field of padding allows the ignored sidebar DIV to occupy some nice open whitespace, without stomping on any text in the content DIV. So extra padding on left hand DIV, negative width on the right hand DIV and you have the functional CSS equivalent of the two cell table of yore. Wow. I understand the necessity of doing this, I know all the benefits of adhering to accessibility requirements, and maintaining web standards. Nobody should be discriminated against because the website wasn’t designed the right way.
My own conclusion however is that while CSS does a lot it suffers the same problems as we had under all previous web design regimes. To accomplish the simple stuff, requires deep, esoteric knowledge of the workarounds. That is what differentiates the Dreamweaver jockeys from the real web designers, they know the tricks and employ them to get the website to look like the Photoshop comps. And it’s all searchable, and readable using screen reading software. But what a winding, twisty road to get there. It’s not rocket science, but it ain’t trivial either.
I used to participate pretty heavily in the old Byte Magazine online forums. One particular thread I was actively involved in was Reconfigurable Computing. The premise we followed was that of Field Programmable Gate Arrays becoming so powerful they could be used as CPUs on a desktop computer. Most people felt this was doable, but inefficient, more likely a FPGA as a reconfigurable co-processor might be better. Enter OpenCL, the way of parsing out tasks to the right tool. In some ways I see a strong correlation to the old Reconfigurable CPU discussion where you used the best tool for the job. In FPGA worlds, you would reconfigure cores to match a particular workload on demand. So if you were playing a Game, you might make the CPU into a GPU until you were done with the game. If you were recording audio, you would reconfigure the FPGA into a DSP, and so on.
OpenCL seems much more lightweight and less risky on the implementation side because it just takes advantage of what’s there. Not anything like the ideas we had of earth shaking changes in architecture (using an FPGA instead of a CPU). Reading what OpenCL might allow in a diverse multi processor desktop computer, it makes me want to strike up the argument for co-processors at least. In an OpenCL world you could easily have an FPGA available as a co-processor and a nice robust nVidia GPU chugging away without discriminating architecturally against either. OpenCL would help parse out the task. Mix in some FPGA level support in the OS as a re-configurable processor, and Voila, you get a DSP or whatever else you might want at any point in the clock cycle.
Given Intel’s drive towards multi-core CPUs, nVidia’s parallel processors, and somewhat less impressive gains on the FPGA front, you could have an AI right on your desktop. Now someone had better get started on those OpenCL drivers and hooks for the kernel! I wish sometimes I could be that person. But it’s too far out of my ability to make it happen.
Now that Ruckus has shut down a number of Universities in the U.S. have been caught unawares. No one had forewarning that their attempt to provide a legal alternative to file sharing was going to be taken away. Worse yet RIAA who said they weren’t starting an ‘new’ legal suits against students back in August has continued filing new suits since that time. So what is one to do?
I was asked recently to do a quick rundown of legal music services or retail outfits. I think information gathering at this point is the only sane approach to such a sudden cut in service. At the University where I work we posted an announcement that Ruckus had shut down and we were looking into it. What I noticed at two other Universities who had Ruckus was they put up notices that indicated while Ruckus was shutdown there are still other legal alternatives to Peer to Peer filesharing. So the question becomes does an institution still bear the financial responsibility to provide a legal alternative to file sharing?
In these tight financial times, University provosts an chancellors are going to have to really reconsider how much legal protection they need from the RIAA. There may have been a vain hope that students would be encouraged to use the legal music services. But most stayed away and either continued filesharing or buying music from iTunes.com. So in this second phase of Universities dealing with the peer to peer filesharing, I think we are at the point of advocacy ONLY. Providing a legal alternative at reduced cost and little to no choice is now too costly (in terms of Full Time Equivalent users). It is also too costly in terms of broken contracts when your music service goes out of business overnight. I did find one listing at a University website that had been a Ruckus customer pointing to our old friend Wikipedia.
What better way to provide an alternative than to permit the wisdom of crowds to prevail. Rather than me write up a review of all the possible alternatives, why not let the contributors to Wikipedia collect and edit all the reviews/stats on all the services. Then each and every individual can make the rational choice as to whether or not they want to buy music or steal it over the Internet.
In a Biblical parable it is described that if you give a man a fish, he’ll eat for a day. However if you teach a man to fish he will eat for a life time. This metaphor is used and abused all over the place to suit ones purposes. Today however I’m going to mix my metaphors and try to recount the conversation my wife and I had regarding the brown bag lunch. I’ve been an adherent to the brown bag lunch starting at age 12 when I had to stand in long lines to get my school lunch in Junior High. It took so long to get through the line, I had no time to eat before I had to go back to class. So I begged my mother to start buying lunch items and I would make the lunch. And that’s what I did for the next 25 years or so until I moved in with my fiancee. She insisted that she make my lunch. In fact on a few occasions she actually would make a Japanese style lunch with a typical Japanese style lunch box. I even bought one for myself the first time I visited Japan. Most recently, we talked about her making the lunch and I said, “If you want to stop making the lunch, that’s fine with me, I don’t mind making the lunch.”
Then it occured to me that she had smothered me with kindness in those early days. Women or at least my fiancee are really good about actions. They are big into following through on plans. She had every intention of making me happy and she did all kinds of unexpected nice things. I tried to reciprocate as I went along. I would vacuum the house. Maybe clean the kitchen, dust the floors. It wasn’t a big pain to do these things. So today she finally decided to take me up on my offer of making the lunch. And I jumped right into it. I haven’t made my lunch regularly since 2004 I think. But, I don’t mind it. I’ve tried to maintain some level of self-sufficiency after marriage just to take the burden off of her so she could enjoy the same free time I enjoy on a daily basis. We are not overwhelmed with housework or chores. We keep up with that pretty well I think. But getting back to our discussion about my offer to start making lunch, She laughed and hugged me and said, “Well now that I’ve caught the fish,..” and I said in return, “…, The fish has to fish for himeslf”. So no matter what happens it’s always best to take up the things you have always done rather than be lazy and let your spouse do all the work in a certain area. I’m amazed to find out that a lot of men won’t vacuum. I don’t know why, but it is often the case. When it comes to laundry, I generally wash my own clothes every time. Occasionally I have to help my wife fold her clothes, but she manages to wash her own clothes and other things too. She does bedsheets, towels, etc. So whatever your spouse does, you have to equal that doing, that is the law of attraction.
H.264 is the new DivX, the new Xvid as announced yesterday on Anandtech.com:
Right now transcoding Blu-ray movies isn’t exactly at the top of everyone’s list, but using H.264/x264 you can significantly reduce file sizes on any video. x264 is the new DivX and its usefulness extends far beyond just ripping HD movies. Needless to say, its use isn’t going to increase unless encoding using the codec gets faster.
Anand Lal Shimpi writes in regards to the ungodly long encode times it takes to convert Blu-ray Sony movies into any other more ‘portable’ format. x264 will be the lingua franca sine qua non if the GPU manufacturers and third parties like Elemental Technologies step up. Transcoding while being a boring thing, is unfortunately a very necessary thing and speeding that up by any means necessary will be a truly differentiating feature of any hardware/software tie-up. nVidia should be dumping some development funds or payment in kind money into Elemental Technologies in order to raise the margin value of it’s GPU products. nVidia’s marketing department could turn some great amount of hay with badges/stickers saying “Speeds up your video rips!” or some equally lowest common denominator appeal to the mid and low end market for nVidia GPUs. Power users will already know and take advantage of it, but the mid and low end market don’t care and wonder why it’s valuable to them.
I’m impressed by the numbers quoted in the Anandtech article. Under the ‘Insane Quality’ settings for the x264 encoder, it only took 71 seconds to encode a full rez Blu-ray (1920×1080 30fps) stream of 2 minutes in length. It’s faster than real time transcoding for the largest file sizes and bitrates using the extravagantly highest quality settings. That shows great promise for folks at the mid and low end of the market who are trying to dump Spiderman 3 onto their kid’s PSP or video iPod.
There was a time I rode the bus in Junior High School where the older black kids brought a boombox onto the bus. I didn’t have a choice but to listen. However I got so used to it being there I didn’t know I would miss it. Work yo’ body, work yo’ body, work yo’ body. All the way! Pump, pump, pump, pump, pump, pump, pump pump iit up! Those were the days. I wonder what those band names were called. I never really found out what was on those old cassette tapes. I just remember it being loud and very rhythm heavy.
If a born again Christain evangelical like Bush, is as close to god as he says he is then he will take the death of Gerald Ford as a sign. Evangelicals like George Bush (43) feel they have a special relationship with God and that if you haven’t gone through it yourself, there really isn’t anyway to tell you what it’s like. I have no interest in finding out myself. I’m not into that whole self-discovery, epiphany seeking kind of lifestyle. I’m pretty happy with the way things are. So that’s why I’m begging Bush (43) to read the signs God is trying to send him, and moderate. Be nice. Don’t be evil. Everyone, even the press say over and over again Gerald Ford was the nicest person they ever met. Why is Bush such a hater. Please George Bush, stop being a hater. Get out of Iraq, leave Iran and North Korea alone, and wrap up Afghanistan. Please for the sake of all that is sacred, and holy at this time of year be more moderate. Thankyou, that is all.
Carpet Bomberz Inc. 
