My Desultory Blog

Posted By RichC on August 10, 2009

Although I’m not going to refer to myself as a “Rozling” (followers of Roz Savage’s adventure), I do check on her progress and follow the blog of the ocean rowing British adventurer Roz Savage. She is currently 78 days into the second of three legs of a Pacific Ocean crossing after completing the first leg to Hawaii in 99 days in 2008. Her next stop is  Tuvalu and then on to Australia.  In recent day’s she’s been struggling to stay on coarse  although today has made up a significant amount of latitude (map of last month on left).

The purpose of the adventure, if there really needs to be one, is to draw attention to the environmental issues of plastic pollution, climate change and habitat destruction of which she is an excellent spokeswoman. She also is a good motivational speaker using the “one stroke at a time” mantra. When interviewed as to her reason why she goes to such an extreme, she recalls handwriting two obituaries — one with the life she ‘was’ living and one where she pursues a dream — “I had a big dream for a big adventure and decided to make it happen.”

Roz, more than most adventurers, seems to also embrace technology. As a writer, she is excellent at sharing with the written word through her blog, as well as audio and video (see youtube channel). She has done numerous interviews with the press and updates regularly through a satellite phone with tech notables like Leo Laporte.

As a dreamer of adventure on the ocean, I semi-envy her spirit and can-do attitude. Besides the extreme physical endurance, the risk of rowing the Pacific Ocean is substantial.

Category: Environment, Sailing | 4 Comments »
Tags: Environment, ocean, rowing

Posted By RichC on August 9, 2009

Last week while trekking through Ohio I detoured off of I-75 in Troy, Ohio to swing by Waco Field (1WF) and the Waco Museum (pronounced “wah-co”). Fortunately the museum wasn’t open or my detour off the interstate would have been significantly longer. It was a nice day though to take a few minutes to walk around the grass strip and snap a couple photos of the museum and field. Having an interest in aviation and living in southwestern Ohio offers the benefit  of historic sites and ties to the development of powered flight, as well as its many founders. With Dayton being the home town of the Wright Brothers, numerous companies expanded in and around this midwest manufacturing area in the early part of the 20th century and that included the Waco Aircraft Company. It’s founding started when two men businessmen Clayton J. Brukner and Elwood Junkin met barnstorming pilots Charley Meyers and George Weaver.

One such company was the Waco Aircraft Company which built airplanes in Troy, Ohio. The company was founded as the Weaver Aircraft Company in Lorain, Ohio and moved to Troy just north of Dayton in 1924 taking the name Advanced Aircraft Company. The kept the Weaver logo —  WACO  — and changed the name in 1929 to Waco Aircraft Company.

Through its history as Weaver, Advanced and Waco, the company built 80 different models (see coding system) of aircraft  between 1919 and 1946 from the popular open cockpit bi-plane the UPF-7 to the WWII D-Day Normandy invasion and Operation Market Garden gliders. Waco Aircraft Company was the leading civilian aircraft company between 1924 and 1935 and sold airplanes to 37 different countries including the largest buyer Brazil.

Currently there are several organizations working to preserve and enjoy those original WACO airplanes that are still being flown. The 3 popular clubs are the National Waco Club, American Waco Club and Western Waco Association. A company, Waco Classic Aircraft, in Battle Creek, Michigan which is unrelated to the original Waco company, has used the plans filed with the Library of Congress to build a classic looking but modern day YMF based Waco bi-plane.

Heading Home after a long day

Category: Aviation, History, Travel | No Comments »
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Posted By RichC on August 8, 2009

I’ve spent the morning finally getting around to tinkering beyond the norm with my Palm Pre. I’ve installed a couple functional ‘homebrew’ apps that really improves my ‘like’ for the smartphone device. First, I learned how to root and use developer mode on the Pre and installed a great little app that improves screen and keyboard lighting for night use — Brightness Unlinked. It is handy in that it offers a dimmer screen (read: longer battery life) and a brighter keyboard. BUT alas … it was only my test install for the more important apps to come.

Enter MyTether— an app that returns the ability to access the Internet from a computer by quickly jumping on the web or  downloading email while on the road.  MyTether might have Palm and Sprint execs pondering what to do about over using a phone or excessive data use … and could eventually cost us another few bucks to use  Phone-As-Modem (PAM). At minimum they may stop the ability to use the Pre with a computer. For now it will really help me when I need a connection in an emergency … or while posting this and FTPing the screenshots.

Speed at my home (see below) isn’t anything to write home about, but certainly is easily as good as a very busy hotel wifi connection or “no connection” while stopping for a quick lunch or in front of a clients office in the car.

A few pluses is that the Palm Pre can be set up to be used as a WiFi router (Wireless Access Point – WAP), and by enabling MyTether in this way several computers can be connect through its Adhoc network and access the Internet. Currently I’ve disabled my home network and have both my Mac and notebook PC running off the Pre — pretty nice if it doesn’t cost $60 more per month? Currently, the Pre is comfortably charging while its doing its duty and offering up some pretty solid 3G network connectivity. (I’ll test the speeds again when I get a better signal)

SprintPCS Palm Pre connection 8/8/2009

Category: Cellphone | 4 Comments »
Tags: mytether, palm, sprint

Posted By RichC on August 6, 2009

I’ve been thinking about buying a new USB ThumbDrive/FlashDrive for some time now, primarily for backups, transfer and storage when a  Buy.com email hit my inbox and triggered my impulse purchase — 64GB Kingston DataTraveler.

A few years ago when I was traveling more often, I purchase my first and only ThumbDrive which has served me well (and my son in school too). At the time, a 1 GB USB ThumbDrive was unheard of … and I even had to order it direct from Hong Kong. Of course now a 1GB is laughable, but back then it cost me over $300! (I’m not laughing) Fast forward to 2009 and memory is far less expensive, making small flash memory cards (took two 16GB SD cards on our recent trip) and USB drives give-a-way items, especially smaller ones. Of course I wanted a bigger ThumbDrive in order to transfer larger files, video or to back up more secure data with encryption (I’m storing a Truecrypt directory). The less than $130 price point made the memory drive attractive and considering my son heads back to college in a couple weeks with my USB007 drive, I figure it was a good time to upgrade.

Unfortunately the  Kingston 64GB FlashDrive can’t be used as Microsoft Windows “Readyboost” memory — but then that wasn’t the purpose. Real life transfer speeds seem a bit slow, but calculations show 29MB/second moving files from the Kingston DataTraveler 200 ThumbDrive to my Window 7 RC notebooks computer’s hard drive and 13MB/sec transferring data from the computer to the ThumbDrive (the Apple Macintosh was about the same, although I didn’t time it). I’m sure I’ll be kicking myself in a few months as flash memory continues to drop, but then again hyper-inflation could make my purchase a deal? (listen to Peter Schiff speaking about  2009-2010 US Hyperinflation — MP3 audio)
😯

Category: Computer, Financial | No Comments »
Tags: flash, Memory, thumbdrive

Posted By RichC on August 5, 2009

In the business world, dominating a market has long been the practice of corporations. Some of it is justifiable since research, development and marketing cost companies a significant amount of money, but eventually most large corporations flirt with anti-trust laws. In the early 20th century and with hindsight it is easy to spot (ie. Standard Oil in 1911), but as the century drew to a close  the challenges of pinpointing what  behaviors are monopolistic and which are just smart business practices has blurred.

Microsoft in the 1990s … undisputed king of the personal computer operating system with MSDOS followed by Windows. To protect their turf, they spun their code in order to integrate Internet tools and services thwarting smaller browser companies bringing the eyes of anti-trust legislators upon them — too slow and too late for many struggling competitors. Other software companies like Adobe dominate by purchasing smaller rivals that threaten their products or preventing access to proprietary, but dominate file formats. In In keeping with the computer theme, Intel dominates when it comes to providing chipsets for PCs and devices … although monopolistic behavior is less noticed by the average consumer (direct competitors might suggest otherwise?). Then their is retail giant Walmart with rigid and frugal business practices that have work very well for this company: buying power, low prices and match or beat local competition has become difficult to beat when it comes to consumer value. Unfortunately for smaller retailers, it is nearly impossible to match the buying power of Walmart, difficult to sell at tiny margins and frustrating when a Grand Opening ‘ultra’ low price strategy can last long enough in small towns to put most ‘mom and pops’ out of business. Eventually competition in small town disappears, Walmart prices inch up, although remain respectably low enough to thwart competition upstarts. Unfortunately for residents of small towns, after a couple years of  Walmart matching or beating competitors, consumers are left with fewer retailers … especially smaller ones. Is this monopolistic behavior or just a shrewd business practice?

Currently, Palm and Palm Pre owners are facing Apple’s dominance in the recorded media and smartphone arena.  Apple claims to be defending their product when they block access to their  iTunes software (both Mac and PC computers) based on USB Vendor ID number (see PDF complaint letter). Some see this as controlling customer purchased music, audio and video and using methods counter to the openness being promoted by the USB-IF governing body. There is little doubt that Apple desires to prevent all external devices except theirs to access data that is controlled by iTunes. Is this monopolistic … maybe … but as a consumer it does slow progress and reduce competition.

Back to my initial comment about companies investing in research, development and marketing, I believe that needs to be protected long enough to be significantly profitable (ie. patents). We need this so that companies and individuals continue to risk capital on innovation. But when their is a move to protect and monopolize beyond the product, either by shear size and dominance , anti-trust oversight needs to prevail. In the case of using USB-IF interoperability ID numbers to block access to a computers organized data, its smells of Apple trying to control and dominate recorded media on  computers and the devices using this media.

An article in the NYTimes quotes Tim Wu, a professor at Columbia:

“There’s something very unseemly about what Apple is doing. It’s very counter to the ideals of openness, which is a concept Apple pioneered in computing.” In 2007, Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, issued a call to the music industry for openness, titled “Thoughts on Music.”

As for Palm, Mr. Wu said, “It sounds like an uphill battle, in terms of trying to stop Apple from doing this.”

But Palm may have a shot. “The history suggests that openness wins,” said Mr. Wu.

_

Category: Financial, News, Politics | 2 Comments »
Tags: palm

Posted By RichC on August 4, 2009

Once again another incremental upgrade of WordPress moving my install to the 2.8.3 release … and thanks to Keith Dsouza‘s open source plug-in — WordPress incremental backup, it’s a painless and pretty easy step by step process (perhaps 5 minutes with database backups and all).

Speaking of open source, one of the other projects that Keith is working on is a simple Twitter information look up application called Twitlookup. Although there are several functions,  I expect that the dictionary and weather tools could get the most use. (The new app  is down as of this lunchtime posting)
😳

Category: Computer, Productivity, Social Media | No Comments »
Tags: coding, twitter, wordpress

Posted By RichC on August 3, 2009

I have a new found respect for Michelle Malkin as I watched her handle “The View” ladies and audience; she was better than most while promoting her book, in my opinion. (EDIT: thanks Scott)

For those into heavy political reading (right wing oriented), Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies, looks to be a very interesting read — although at 400 pages I may have to wait until the MP3 version is released???

Category: Books, Politics, Video-TV | 4 Comments »
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Posted By RichC on August 3, 2009

A friend … and regular reader of my blog … sent me a message mentioning that the  “Word of the Day” over at Dictionary.com was none other than desultory.

Thanks Scott.

Category: Misc | No Comments »
Tags: desultory

Posted By RichC on August 2, 2009

I was traveling to western NY this weekend and “had” planned to use the Sprint Navigation app with GPS on my Palm Pre, but the GPS on the apps wouldn’t load correctly. I tried a reboot and switching the GPS on and off, along with multiple app reloads of both Sprint Navigation and Google Maps … foolishly dong this while driving (but it is on the windshield mount — see photo).  I was trying to find directions to the Watermark Restaurant on the north end of Chautauqua Lake in Mayville NY, which was about 15 miles away from where we were staying. Nevertheless I was irritated that it wasn’t working and even more frustrated when my wife kept telling me to “stop playing with your phone.”

Eventually I gave up knowing that Mayville is a pretty small town. Thankfully I had no problem finding the restaurant since I was also being followed by my brother-in-law from Georgia (BTW — he is now a proud VW TDI owner!). Still, I was irritated that when I needed to use the GPS and mapping apps, the Palm Pre failed to perform.

The Fix … until Palm can correct the problem:

Load the Sprint Navigation app and minimize the ‘card’ so that you can load the phone app. Press ##GPS#  or  ##477# which brings up the GPS Information Screen. Select “Get Fix” and the phone retrieves the GPS info. Once the phone app is closed, return to Sprint Navigation and it should now work.

Category: Cellphone, Productivity | 10 Comments »
Tags: GPS, Navigation, palm, sprint

Posted By RichC on August 1, 2009

While updating my blog for yet another day from our recent vacation, I noticed that backdating vacation posts was more the norm than an exception. I glanced at the “Years ago on this date” right sidebar and re-enjoyed my blog archive about summer of 2005 trip to Calgary, Alberta, which was posted in August after our July vacation.
😳

As time keep ticking by, I’m so glad my son and I took as many trips as we did together. Great memories and good times. Where have the years gone?

Category: Personal, Photos, Travel | 2 Comments »
Tags: alberta, archive, calgary, canada, canadian rockies, taylor, vacation