Philip Greenspun’s Weblog

Just downloaded the new Google sidebar software and am playing with its Weblog aggregation features.  It installed and started doing useful things within about 2 minutes.  Yet another impressive showing from our former classmates and students.  In other computer news, Dell is now offering laptops for $499.  These aren’t nearly as good as IBM’s $599 laptop in some ways (only 1/4 GB instead of 3/4 GB; no built-in wireless; on the other hand it does come with a CD burner/DVD combo drive) but it is nice to see the $500 threshold cracked. 

[One wonders if it is a good time to short Apple stock.  A Macintosh is not only 2X the price of one of these IBM or Dell laptops but it can’t run any of the software being put out by the world’s most innovative software company (Google; all of their stuff has been Windows-only so far).  If MP3 jukebox prices start to fall and iPod-like devices become a commodity like all other portable music players, it might be “game over” for Apple shareholders.]

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If you want a free T-shirt, free parking, free snacks, (from Children’s) and a free lunch (from me), come to Boston Children’s Hospital today around 12:15 pm and we’ll all donate blood together.  The blood center’s Web page has directions, a phone number for questions, etc.

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I’m about 200 pages into 1491, a new book by Charles Mann about the civilizations of the Americas before the Europeans and European diseases came in.  The book is very interesting for

• its discussion of the Indian tribes in New England and how their conflicts played into the hands of the English


• the history of an advanced society in Norte Chico, just north of Lima, Peru, dating back to around 3500 B.C. and possibly earlier, all based on research from the last 30 years or so and much of it based on research from the 1990s


• the texture of Indian life that comes through


• the texture of the debates among scientists trying to piece together the histories of these almost-extinct cultures


• lots of great maps, photos, and illustrations

Highly recommended to all residents of and visitors to the Americas.

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The disposable laptop computer is finally here:  IBM (Lenovo) Thinkpads are $600 with 3/4 GB of RAM, wireless networking, and a 14″ display.  I’ve always liked the Thinkpads because of the TrackPoint, the little red button in the middle of the keyboard, which I find much easier to use than the trackpads standard on most other laptops.  Thinkpads are also remarkably resistant to dropping and other abuse.  The only thing that one could say against this configuration is that it doesn’t include a CD/DVD burner.  So the price of a decent laptop is now converging with the price of an expensive cell phone.  I wrote about this possibility about one year ago: http://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2004/09/09.  Will people still want to pay $1000+ for a laptop that they will have to guard from theft and impact when they could just buy a Thinkpad for $600 now and replace it two years from now for $450?

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Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday.  In our current era of real estate speculation and McMansions what could be more appropriate than to celebrate land theft and gluttony?  In 2005, however, a few of us have decided that perhaps we can get our 7000 daily calories without the biting cold weather and familial sturm und drang.  Where?  Mexico.

The plan is the following:

• fly into Guadalajara on Sunday, November 20 (I might be alone in this town; I’m coming from helicopter school and cousins in Los Angeles)
  
• catch a bus to the UNESCO World Heritage city of Guanajuato on Tuesday, November 22 where most of the group (4-8 friends; not sure yet) will assemble
  
• hire a couple of big taxis or catch a public bus to the gringo heaven of San Miguel on Nov 23 or 24
  
• return home from the Leon-Guanajuato airport (BJX) on the afternoon of Tuesday, November 29

None of us have ever been to any of these towns so we’d be grateful for tips in any of the following areas:

• things to do and see in the various towns
  
• interesting English-speaking residents
  
• good hotels
  
• houses to rent in San Miguel (might be nice to have a big house to sleep 8 people complete with a staff to cook and clean)
  
• a driver with a van and/or guide we could hire in San Miguel
  
• language teachers in San Miguel

Please add your suggestions to the comments or email philg@mit.edu.  Thanks!

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The server for www.greenspun.com is just about dead.  Fortunately this comes at a time when one of my nephews, last name of “Greenspun”, is reaching his 11th birthday.  I’m planning on shutting down the outsourced online community component of greenspun.com, which is these days better handled by Yahoo! Groups, and replacing the whole server with a family Web site.  The question then becomes where to get it hosted and what software to run.  I want the 11-year-old punk to administer the service; I will keep my own content primarily on http://philip.greenspun.com

It would be nice to have the following:

• email for the family, e.g., python-the-cichlid@greenspun.com to forward wherever
  
• places for family members to create personal Web sites, in the pre-Weblog days I would have said that these would be subdirectories off the root
  
• RSS feeds to which interested friends can subscribe; it would be nice if someone could say “I want to see new stuff by Benjamin and Harry but not from Philip” or “I want to see everything new”
  
• easy to upload and update content in various formats (text, photos, sound, video) by young family members using Web browsers alone
  
• long-run potential for doing some scripting and database programming (though this will not be an online community-style site; the Internet is too full of spam these days to make that worthwhile at a family level)
  
• if there is scripting it should be done in some tools that are likely to be popular in 2015 or 2020 when we are likely next to examine the server
  
• an annual cost of under $250 (Uncle Philip needs to save up for his turbine-powered helicopter)

Where to host this and what software to run?

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I would like to listen in my car to some of Doug Kaye’s IT Conversations and perhaps other podcasts and audio streams from the Internet.  The car has a Pioneer stereo with a fantastically horrific user interface (all faceplate and bouncing lights display; a handful of tiny buttons; the factory Toyota system was much better but it is no longer being made and the 1998 original is dead) but thankfully an AUX input and the ability to play MP3-encoded CDs.

What is the best way to get podcast items into the car?  An MP3 jukebox of some sort?  Burning CDs every now and then?  If an MP3 jukebox is the right way to go, which one makes the most sense given that a big part of it will get wiped and refreshed every week or so?

[Please don’t suggest an iPod.  I have used friend’s iPods and find the user interface to be confusing compared to the Creative MP3 jukeboxes (they have more buttons).  Additionally, various commenters on http://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2005/07/16 thought that I might be gay and therefore it seems unwise to appear in public with anything made by Apple.]

[Resolution:  I bought a 1 GB miniSD card for my Motorola MPx220 mobile phone and I burned an MP3 CD that does in fact play in the car.  I still can’t figure out MP3 music CDs.  Is there a standard format for a playlist that you also burn onto it?  If not, how does the average player figure out in what order to play the tracks?]

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http://philip.greenspun.com/photography/exhibits/newport-jazz-festival-2005 contains some photos from last weekend’s Newport Jazz Festival.  Enjoy!

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I am releasing my scripts for using Adobe Photoshop CS2 to process camera RAW images into multiple sizes of JPEG, with black borders and copyright info, and deliver them from a Web server.  The software and an explanation are available from http://philip.greenspun.com/photography/photoshop-scripts/

I believe that I have solved the “huge thumbnails filled with extraneous crud” problem that my original Photoshop CS script had.  The thumbnails are now only about 9 KB in size.

http://philip.greenspun.com/images/200506-alaska-trip-s60/ and http://philip.greenspun.com/images/200506-kugluktuk/ are a couple of fun examples of directories produced with this script.

Comments appreciated.

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A couple of recent news stories have shed some light on the value of formal education.

Peter Jennings is dead, having held one of the most important journalism jobs in North America.  He was a high-school dropout and never attended college.

Microsoft, one of the world’s most valuable ($293 billion) and cash-rich ($38 billion) companies, was out shopping for a chief operating officer (COO), i.e., a manager.  With the ability to hire anyone in the world, whom did Microsoft choose?  Kevin Turner, age 40, the Chief Information Officer (CIO) of Wal-Mart.  Mr. Tuner was responsible for all the information technology at a company that is famous for its advanced use of IT.  What illustrious schools and brilliant professors prepared him for these challenges?  Mr. Turner got a bachelor’s degree in business from East Central University in Ada, Oklahoma.  He never obtained an MBA.  He never studied computer science or MIS at a college.

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