02.18.10

crapware

Posted in and yet true, tech talk at 10:03 pm by paul

Can you guess the time we installed the “upgrade?”

I’d take it more in stride, but this PostScript preflighting software licenses at $20k/host and stubbornly refuses to use more than one CPU/core. We were considering putting our 2 licenses on virtual hosts to at least free up some hardware, but can we really do that if it’ll consume 70% of a CPU when idle?

Add to that that you can’t run it as a service, you are requred to keep a generic user logged in at the console to run the application.

Fie on you!

02.04.10

silos

Posted in and yet true, tech talk at 10:41 pm by paul

An interesting op-ed by an former Microsoft VP, describing the silos that company is divided into and a bit of the internecine warfare that goes on between them.

Microsoft posted a rebuttal, and one of their point was the integration of a product called OneNote into the Office suite. This was the first I had ever heard of OneNote, so I clicked through to the demo page and found that it requires Flash.

Maybe someone should tell the OneNote team about Silverlight?

02.01.10

reservoirs

Posted in Uncategorized at 8:15 am by paul

I know the reservoirs could use the boost, but still: sigh.

01.16.10

1862

Posted in programming at 9:43 pm by paul

I made previous reference to a scan available online of a map of San Francisco and my intention to put that map on a Google Map. Well, I’ve spent way more time on it than I anticipated but it finally, actually works as I originally envisioned.

Challenges:

  1. Google Maps are aligned with “true north”; the old map is aligned with some other north, possibly magnetic north at the time the map was made
  2. the horizontal and vertical scales are not the same
  3. the old map apparently fell apart and was taped back together; this was not done perfectly and there are a few small gaps and missing bits
  4. the scale tends to vary over relatively small distances; agreement between the tiles I generated and Google’s tiles can wander even within one tile

I ultimately decided not to fix items 3 and 4. Fixing the gaps tended to do more harm than good and scale variances require far more graphics-fu than I am ever likely to have.

If you want to cut to the chase & see the map, it is here.

Here is what I did: Read the rest of this entry »

01.10.10

Tweets for 2010-01-10

Posted in Uncategorized at 9:00 pm by admin

  • pet peeve: "simple" script in <new language> gets unwieldy and I wind up re-doing it in Perl … maybe all I have is the 1 hammer? #

01.07.10

Tweets for 2010-01-07

Posted in Uncategorized at 9:00 pm by admin

  • love my eyetv but the only API is AppleScript :( #
  • if you had bit.ly preview, you would already know where that link goes … http://bit.ly/p7aq #

neighborhood

Posted in house, programming at 7:50 pm by paul

I tweeted a few days ago about an article on SFGate about the little street we live on. A couple days after that, the SFist posted an old map of the city from 1862.

Take close look at the map, in the lower left corner. If you follow Market Street to the lower left corner, near a large number 11 is “Kate Street”. This street no longer exists, and it leads to an area labeled “Hospital Area”; this is now Duboce Park and three cul-de-sac blocks of homes, one of which is now Potomac St. It’s fun to see the map agree with what I read in the book by Harry Nimmo referenced in the article.

I am entertaining a fantasy of creating a Google Map of the area and replacing the tiles with the old map. Hopefully I’ll actually get to that.

UPDATE: I’ve checked the Google Maps API, and it seems what I need to do is a “Custom Map Type”, which The Google deems an “Advanced Topic.” They put this in red; I may be in over my head!

01.06.10

ces

Posted in tech talk at 10:17 pm by paul

We have finally seen the HP Slate, and it is … a PC with no keyboard. Add the Kindle application and it’s at least a general-purpose PC. But we found out nothing about battery life, pricing, data plans/connections, or system specs.

That, and there is no mention of it on HP’s web site. I managed to find a press release, but I am not sure if the device shown on stage is mentioned therein.

01.05.10

tablets!

Posted in and yet true, tech talk, unbelievable at 11:23 pm by paul

“Maybe it’s awesome”

Props to Mr. Gruber for the perfect summary of Microsoft & HP’s tablet/slate prototype. Complete with stylus! That is just what the world is waiting for, two years post-iPhone. A stylus! Can’t wit for the demo.

OK so seriously, there are a few things missing from this demo:

  • twitter
  • facebook
  • gmail
  • flickr
  • SMS
  • chat

ie, everything a modern consumer cares about on their (mobile) computer. A couple inescapable conclusions from this information:

  • Microsoft has had a skunkworks project for a new mobile operating system that looks nothing like any Microsoft product and specifically does not emulate any current features of Word, Excel or Outlook
  • Microsoft has given up one the Office/Windows duet that has given them two decades of profitability
  • this project has somehow seen the light of day, but hasn’t been released in any way shape or form

Tweets for 2010-01-05

Posted in Uncategorized at 9:00 pm by admin

  • nice "leak:" http://bit.ly/6Bdo8v you forgot to make the CPU speed a half-integer multiple of the bus speed. #
  • so it seems we are finally about to have new/proper owners in the downstairs unit. w00t! meeting them on sunday. #

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