Comments on Backing Up a Linux Laptop
New Challenges, New Tools
iCloud “Family Sharing”: Great Feature Unless You Use iTunes Match
Family Sharing provides users with a way to share purchases from their iCloud/iTunes account with up to five other people. Additionally, this feature enables you to create iCloud accounts for children, and to manage the purchases and content available to those accounts.
iTunes has been around a lot longer than this feature, and so for years now, people have had to a different means to share app purchases across multiple users. The most common solution is pretty straightforward; create one iTunes account that is shared by multiple people. Apple supports this approach, too: on any Mac or iOS device, you can use one account for your iCloud stuff and a separate one for your iTunes stuff…
Where to Post? Finding Yourself Amongst Ello, Facebook, and the Glut of Social Media
TL;DR: Stop Expecting Achievements to Make You Happy
A moment of clarity from the folks at HuffPo…
Here’s the best part: When you detach happiness from achievement, these five things that happen are the key ingredients to success. Disconnecting happiness from achievement is the best way to achieve anything…
OS X to Fedora 20: The User Experience, Pt. 2
OS X to Fedora 20: The User Experience, Pt. 1
A little background here: I have been a Mac enthusiast for a number of years now. I would not say that I am religious about OS X, but if the OS X user experience is a philosophical application of “[opinionated][1] [software][2]”, then I find myself in agreement with most of the opinions that the Apple UX team has expressed.
However, I am also an open source developer. I’d like to believe that it is possible to create a similar and possibly even superior experience with a Linux-based desktop environment. And lo, this is what lead me, a few weeks ago, to get Fedora 20 running on a MacBook Air. If you’re interested in trying the same thing, check out Matt Hicks’ [invaluable blog post][3] on setting things up.
Over a series of blog posts I am digging into my impressions of the Fedora 20 user experience as I work through this total switch-over.
Frozen, Victorious
Bastion shook his head, and the ghastly images faded away. Glancing up, he could see that the others were watching him. No one was shocked or concerned; they wore their professional detachment like masks. He blinked, glanced up at the cold winter sun through the tree canopy, and then back to the dead forest floor. Signs, patterns, stories. Two people had come this way, one supporting the other. Bastion read their desperation and their determination in lurching footprints that broke the frozen carpet of leaves. He read it in the dried pools of blood. A cold sweat had sprung up on the back of Bastions neck, but he made a broad sweep of his hand and began walking again, deeper into the woods. Taking the cue, the others started walking as well, spread evenly in a line perpendicular to Bastions course.
If it were a rescue, they would have been calling out. They had been calling out for hours, but one hundred yards ago they had found the jackets, followed by gloves, followed by shirts. The garments were all cold. Too cold. At the top of a ridge, one of the others stopped the line. Bastion walked to him and glanced down the slope, sighting along his outstretched arm. “Okay. Radio it in. I’ll go take a look.”
With care he walked down, careful to stand clear of the tracks he had been following. One had fallen here and recovered with help from the other. More blood. More stumbling. Things breaking down; getting slower. At the foot of the ridge, they lay intertwined in the partial darkness under a grand elm. The man was frozen and still, eyes to the heavens, alabaster white skin except for the now blackened right thigh that had been torn in the car accident–two days ago now? Three? Jeans and sneakers, no shirt. He lay in the lap of the woman, held in a loose embrace.
Her body rested easily against the trunk of the giant tree. Her frozen black hair framed a face that was at once serene and broken. Jeans and sneakers, tank top. The orbit of bone around her left eye and the eye itself had been crushed when her head hit the dashboard, but her clear, gray right eye stared through Bastion, defiant, beyond him into some other space. There was no fear here, no sadness and no sound except for the drone of the radio some ways behind.
Bastion remembered his training. “Cold weather is a funny thing. Can’t trust a frozen body. You ain’t dead until youre warm and dead, ya catch me?” He stepped forward gingerly to take pulses on their necks and feel for breathing. He was glancing back into their eyes, looking for signs of something that wasn’t there. Satisfied, Bastions muscles were poised to turn to leave, but his mind held him in check.
The visions would be with him again when he finally turned away; he wasn’t ready for that yet. So he lingered for another moment, carefully backing away from what had become a crime scene but glancing around long enough to note the wristbands on their pale wrists. Long enough to register the tattoos on their bare arms. And it all slotted into place–the last part of a story that started four days ago with a missing car. The first part, really.
He felt stupid for the tears that were pricking his eyes. Come on Bastion. They arent sad about it. Got more than most of those poor bastards ever got. Most, but not all… Composing himself, he nodded to them, turned and made the trek back to the others. “Why did they run, Bastion?” It had been a few minutes since he had rejoined them, but Bastions face still glistened with the cold sweat, and he was lost in a private terror for a moment before he could answer. Finally, he pushed the images aside and glanced up. They were patiently waiting, no expression other than that basic curiosity.
“Why did they run from the crash?” Bastion drew a calming breath that brought him fully back to the present. He nodded down the ridge, wiped his brow, and willed a frozen breath to escape his lips. “They escaped from Anderson Medical Center. The police didn’t tell us that–they probably didn’t know.” The others looked puzzled. Bastion knew they didn’t get it. It didn’t mean to them what it meant to him. Subconsciously scratching at the tattoo on his own arm through the parka and the wool, he glanced around again. “They wanted to live for a while before they died.
How not to optimize a site with AJAX
I’ve inherited a project that is seeing some performance issues. We knew this was at least partly to blame on the UI, but most of the problem is down in the application. Fine; we’ve got a plan for the application-level issue and that’ll get solved. But right now, I’ve been picking through the UI because even though inspection with FireBug reveals that the site is loading at a reasonable clip, it doesnt seem to be rendering the main page until every last linked resource is loaded in the browser.
As the subject of this post should indicate, this project features AJAX. AJAX isn’t exactly brand new, but this project represents the first aggressive use of AJAX in my particular custom-projects corner of the universe. And as far as I can tell, once the decision was made to “go AJAX!”, a side directive of “abandon sanity!” was also put in motion.
Heres what’s great about AJAX: You load the static elements of your page once, and then you refresh the dynamic stuff with a behind-the-scenes request that leaves the static page elements unchanged. In other words, it makes a web page behave more like a locally installed application. But let’s say you’ve just learned about AJAX and you want to GO the DISTANCE! Then, even though the static page elements should never change, maybe you dynamically request them, too! And then use JavaScript to discretely rewrite the whole page! In your zero-latency development environment, the difference in rendering time may be completely undetectable. Unfortunately, when half a planet’s worth of internet lies between you and the server, the effect is pretty different.
Your AJAX request is an extra layer of abstraction that just linking static elements from the page itself will completely avoid. And, because the associated rendering may not be possible until after you’ve finished loading all of the AJAX-related JavaScript resources, you leave your users staring at the bare rafters of your web site until the loading is done.
Moral of the story: identify static page elements and keep them out of your AJAX scheme. If you really want to do the whole thing in AJAX, at least give the user a meaningful static site to look at while all of the background requests are churning. They might stay on your site long enough to see what you’ve cooked up..
The Hospital
The quiet evening stands still; a tapestry A history woven in sodium light A memory
Hospitals never used to bother me; I would follow my Dad to the nurses station Wait quietly for him to conduct his rounds and watch people get better.
You never got better here And I’m wearing this stupid yellow band Like it matters
I’m sure Lance is sorry for us
I’m sorry that I was never sad at funerals But they keep getting closer They hurt more now
CMSART in Worcester Pulse
My search and rescue team, and more specifically, one of our most capable and dedicated members, got some great press in this article. If you live in New England and are interested in volunteering with a search and rescue team, check out the Central Massachusetts Search and Rescue Team!
It's who you are
A thought exercise in film
Got this idea from drama_kween - here’s a quote from each of 15 different movies that I like. I’ve picked some fairly obscure ones (movies and quotes); good luck with your guesses. When you’re out of guesses, you can follow the links to the movies on IMDB.
- We fascists are the only true anarchists.
- Your effort to remain what you are is what limits you.
- Power is tearing human minds apart and putting them back together in new shapes of your own choosing.
- I’m not in the business. I am the business.
- Look, I don’t know nothing about you; you don’t know nothing about me. I don’t know if you’re stupid, or some kind of genius. All I know is that I need to get out of here, and you got the gun. So I’m asking you, for the second time, let me go my way here.
- Look at this. Look at what they make you give.
- I call it performance art, but my friend Ariel calls it wasting time. History will decide.
- Love humiliates you. Hatred cradles you.
- I gotta hold on to my angst. I preserve it because I need it. It keeps me sharp, on the edge, where I gotta be.
- What do I think about the U.S. involvement in the war? We should win it.
- This business will get out of control. It will get out of control and well be lucky to live through it.
- I’m trying to understand our world. I dont deal with petty materialists like you.
- Well I, for one, am v-v-very interested to see w-w-what’s going to happen next.
- Mr. Singer. What an appropriate name for a man who can’t shut up.
- Death is… whimsical… today.
Why yes, this -is- the right week to tear out all the plumbing...
Phone status
Sunrocket'd
In memoriam
Elena passed away at 12:55 this morning. She was surrounded by her family and close friends. She stayed with us long enough to see her sister Maria who had, at Elena’s encouragement, followed through with plans to make a two-week trip to Africa. Maria arrived back at Logan Airport at 10:30 in the evening and set foot in the house at 12:30 a.m.
I dreaded the notion that Elena was fighting to stay until her sister’s safe return, but we are all thankful that the family could have that chance to be together. My heart is broken for all of the people that Elena has left behind. I am honored to have known someone who could face such a horrible disease with equal measures of grace and dignity. I’ll post again when I know more about further arrangements. Thank you to everyone who has reached out to me, to Annika, and to the Nilson family.
I am watching something beautiful
(This post is about Elena. Shes not doing very well. I invite you to read this, but I don’t want you to have to.)
I am sitting on a couch. In the center of the room, my wife and her parents are gathered around Elena’s bed. Home and Garden television has been droning on for hours at one end of the room; we are all interior design experts now and we barely notice anymore. The sun outside is bright, but the breeze is surprisingly cold. Elena has been burning up for days, but today it is cool enough that we don’t need to run the AC in her window.
Last night, Elena’s meds were discontinued. She’s on morphine, now. She has a button that gives her more if she needs it, but she hasn’t been lucid enough to use it. Today was a quiet day. I spent my working hours in the next room. Two of Elena’s friends came by and spent some hours around her bed.
The drone of the television is lost under singing. Elena stirs long enough to watch my daughter singing to her. For a moment, the whole family is smiling, and just as quickly, Elena drifts back into her half-sleep. The smiles slowly fade, but Linnea is still signing. And I am still watching them as their gazes return to Elena. I am watching all of the love and prayers. Tears are streaming down my face and I quietly slip from the room.
Elena had no tolerance for visitors who wanted to sit in her room and sob and wring their hands over what is happening to her. She’d made her peace with the cancer and what it was going to do to her and didn’t need to dwell on it. I am standing in the hallway now. We’ll get brief glimpses of her in the next few days. We hope Maria will be back in the U.S. in time to see her. We hope that we can show her the baby that is yet to be born. Were all living hour to hour right now.
Farewell, Brix
After giving the whole thing some serious consideration, I am ending my career with Brix Networks. I have had a tremendous seven years there, and will miss working along side some of the smartest engineers I could ever hope to meet; chief among them, my long-time friend and mentor Mr. Bennett. I have accepted the position of Director of Technology at Mark Altman & Associates, a small and successful publishing agency that is looking to add technical leadership as part of their plan for business growth. Many thanks to K. for bringing this opportunity to my attention. Most importantly, thanks to my wife for supporting me in this decision–even as we prepare to bring kid #2 (!) into the world. Obvious symbolisms aside, this is a great opportunity for me and I look forward to the new challenge.