In case you were snoozing (I sure was) Mercedes-Benz mixed tape 16 is out.
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Category: Idle
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Human Space Invaders
Still trying to wrap my head around being back to work (jet lag sucks). Since I am unable to formulate an intelligent thought, I’ll just share this nifty video with you (thanks Jason!):
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Ahhh…. Vacation
Our family takes an annual spring break to somewhere warm… but this is the first year we’ve really looked forward to the warmth as well as simply a vacation. We look forward to our spring break every year, but when we used to live in California it was never quite as much of a contrast as it was this year (it snowed in Dublin the Sunday before we left).
We flew from Dublin to Cancun on Friday, stayed at a hotel not far from the airport, then headed to Akumal on Saturday. We made a quick stop at Wal*Mart for groceries before making it to our rental house on Half-Moon Bay in Akumal.
I had a bit of jet lag the first day, but waking up early can be nice. Since Akumal faces east the only way to get a colorful picture of the sun over the ocean is to get up at dawn.
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Geeky weekend: Star Wars I – VI
Saint Patrick’s day weekend is a three day weekend here in Ireland (hey, we don’t get president’s day), combine that with Paula still being sick and we had plenty of time to just vegge in front of the boob-tube. All we needed to do was find a good batch of entertainment.
We bought Revenge of the Sith about six months ago but we never got around to watching it. We couldn’t, of course, just start with episode III, we had to start at the “beginning”, episode I (as painful as that would be to sit through).
Watching the whole series in the space of 5 days brought up a few of questions.
- When Obi-Wan dies he vanishes, leaving just his cloak. When Yoda dies, he vanishes leaving no clothes at all. When Darth dies, he leaves everything behind, clothes, meat-sack and all.
- Why did Leia set out to bring Obi-Wan and the death star plans to Alderaan? The rebel base was on Tatooine. You’re going to great lengths to find this guy, why send him on a wild goose chase?
- At the end of episode VI when glowing Obi-Wan, Yoda and Anakin show up to watch the end party, why is Obi-Wan all old and Anakin all young? Sure, George had to make his re-edits… but that one is just dumb.
- If Obi-Wan and the rebels were going to such great lengths to hide Luke from his father why didn’t they change his name to something other than Skywalker? Combine that with stashing him on Darth Vader’s home planet with Darth’s step-brother and it makes me wonder how many brain cells Anakin had left functioning after being given the oven-baked ham treatment.
I guess it doesn’t take a genius to poke holes in George Lucas’s writing. But honestly now, how were the Jedi able to keep peace in the galaxy when all it takes to defeat them is persistent taunting?
Jedi: “Stop you fiend! Put down those stolen power converters!”
Thief: “Oh no! The Jedi! Say, how’s your mother? She still mad that I dumped her and dating your sister?”
Jedi: “Oh!!! Why you! Grrr!! …. Aw nuts. Let me help you carry those.”
Thief: “Thanks”
Saint Patrick’s day for most of the US (except for perhaps, Boston and New York) is much like Saint Valentine’s day: serious stuff… provided you work at Hallmark. It was, however, a bit surreal for Paula and me… being our first year living in Dublin, Ireland.
There were a bunch of events going on in downtown Dublin this weekend, but since Paula is still recovering from being sick we decided to just go to the St. Patrick’s day parade. There were a ton of people downtown and it was fun to check out the scene. Talking to my Irish co-workers it was interesting to find out that many in Ireland view Saint Patrick’s day as a minor, artificial holiday. That said, the Irish people are a social lot and love an excuse to get together (which also explains the third-floor party with a chicken and cow… sort of).
Given the crowds, we couldn’t really see the parade all that well… but we’re both a fan of people watching, so that provided a ton of entertainment in its own right. Here’s an interesting fact: the first Saint Patrick’s day parade wasn’t in Ireland, but in America (in New York or Boston, depending on whom you choose to believe). I suppose that explains why the majority of people in silly leprechaun hats didn’t have Irish accents and hotels which normally charge 90 Euro a night were charging 300 this weekend. Moichandising!
Food Note:
When we got done with the crowds we were having trouble picking out where to grab some lunch. I have a weakness for good pie (especially blueberry) and so when I saw the restaurant “Delish”, which billed itself as a “pie cafe & juice bar” I had to drag Paula in to check it out.
Turns out that “pie” means “pot pie”… and I also love a good meat pie. Paula had the beef and cheese pie while I ordered the chicken, ham and leek pie. Toss in a side of mash (mashed potatoes) with gravy and you’ve got some serious comfort food. It was also seriously tasty. I recommend it if you’re in downtown Dublin and looking for a bit of nosh to warm your belly.
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4 Ways to make your blog really annoying
I think there are plenty of guides to good writing out there, I won’t tell
you about that. You know that if you want people to read your blog you need to
have either great writing skills or unique content (note that I don’t claim to
have either). Attracting readers is simple… driving them away is even
easier. So, if you’re starting to cringe at the cost of your bandwidth or if
your artist friends think you’ve sold out… don’t fret, I have the answer for
you. Read on to learn how to drive users away from your blog.
1. Play hide and seek with the RSS feed
Hide the RSS link
(or don’t show one at all). Take, for example, the subscription link on this
page (I’m not sending any traffic their way… they annoyed me):
The link is hard to find because it’s just a text link and it’s overshaddowed
by the visual clutter of throwing up every feed icon under the sun. Honestly,
if you have to, read the Feed Icon Guidelines on
Mozilla.org (but if you have to, you probably just don’t get it).
It’s quite simple, for your feed, put up a
standard web feed icon similar to this 
or this 
.
Heck, the icon recognizable enough that you can even change the color to suit
your sense of style: 
2. Make RSS completely useless
If you put no useful info
in your RSS feed, what’s the point of offering a feed? Fine, if you want to
pull peopel to your web page so you get ad revenue, great. Even better, put ads
in your feed (e.g. use feedburner). But one certain way to loose readers for
good is to do what CNN does on many posts, put this as the only content of the
RSS feed:
Read full story for latest details?!?!? What kind of crap is that? No, I
don’t think I’ll read the full story. In fact, I think I’ll unsubscribe from
all the CNN feeds and subscribe to the Reuters and BBC feeds instead.
3. Provide links with zero context
You’ve put a link up
on your blog. Great. Um… why?
If you make a post that is simply a link and don’t tell the readers if you
think the target content is cool, useful… or at least tell what it is people
are just playing a guessing game.
Three years ago there weren’t many blogs, and those that existed may not be
updated frequently. These days even dogs have their own blogs. If you are just
posting links, go to del.ico.us. Vapid content, go to twitter. The world is pumping out a ton of
information and we don’t have time to sort through empty posts or, as Omar
learned on parental leave, process feeds which post a thousand times a
day.
Time is short, make your content count.
4. Load your page up with every single profile icon you can
find
We’re all guilty of it… we sign up for some nifty service…
they offer a special link to add to our web page and, like sheep, we do it.
Yes, I’ve done it. But honestly, do you really want to see a page crowded with
links to Technorati, LinkedIN, Xbox Live, Twitter…?
Human beings are pack animals, that’s a given. We identify our affiliations
by the flags we fly, the clothes we wear and, now, by the extra crap we put on
our blog. The extra details are great, but they don’t need to be on your front
page… put them in an “about me” section (they are, after all, just that). The
front page should be about content. I know it’s in our nature, but resist
flashing your geek gang signs on the front page.
My mind is just way too literal sometimes…
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Curious avian behavior
Last November when Paula and I were in Rome we saw a fascinating thing: a swirling cloud of birds which, viewed from a distance, looked more like smoke or a swarm of insects than a flock of birds.
Around dusk Paula and I were walking along the wall of Castel Sant’Angelo in Rome when we saw a massive flock of birds, all seeming to converge on the same location. The birds looked as though they were heading towards a plume of smoke coming up from one of the city’s parks. The “smoke”, however, was flowing both up and down. The best way to get a feel for what it looked like is to check out the video Paula shot with our pocket camera.
Starling murmuration from Reeves Little on Vimeo.
Video: Swirling flock of birds in Rome
We still have no idea what was going on. Our best guess was some sort of feeding frenzy, catching insects which were coming out as the sun went down… but the flock was way up in the air and I think of insects as sticking closer to the earth. Perhaps there are some amateur (or professional) ornithologists out there who can shed some light on this. Or maybe I should just ask an Italian.
FYI: Castle Sant’Angelo is a huge mausoleum built for Emperor Hadrian. It was later fortified and used as a defensive position on the Tiber River. If you’re in Rome we highly recommend visiting the castle in the afternoon as it provides wonderful views of Rome. As sunset approaches grab a table at the little cafe located on the monument’s wall. If you’re lucky you’ll get one of the tables facing the Vatican and get some great pictures of St. Peter’s Basilica with the sun setting behind it.
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Happy work life balance day!
The Irish government has generously acknowledged that we all work too hard and have declared today, March 1st, to be “Work Life Balance Day”. In order to help us out they have… thank the maker… created a web site! I feel much better now.
The Work Life Balance web site has lots of information, but the most helpful thing on the site by far is their 142 page report which includes qualitative results for employers and employees. Having a very short attention span, I jumped straight to the Policy Measures/Interventions on the employee section. I examined the 10 bullet points find the holy grail of… uh… doing stuff to not work too hard while keeping up the respect of coworkers and continuing to earn promotions… and took away these two things from the list that I’ll need to address:
- “Change in the culture of organizations, i.e. male attitudes […]”
Given we have no women on our team as of yet, I’m going to work with my coworkers to rotate the responsibility of having a female attitude. With our team of 9 I think a good balance would be two or three people each week taking on the role, bringing in the much needed female qualities our team lacks (empathy, fashion sense and a general distaste for fart jokes). They won’t, however, need to wear a skirt… that would be silly.
- “Remove the mythology behind work-life balance arrangements.”
This is going to be a tougher one to implement. To date we’ve been able to keep people slaving away at their computers with the threat of a Minotaur which roams the halls until 7pm. Granted, it also means I can no longer go home early every Thursday using the excuse “Sorry, I need to pick my Unicorn up for school, my wife is at her mermaid husbandry class.”
Speaking of husbandry… women in Ireland get 26 weeks of maternity leave. Their husbands? 1-3 days. Uh, oh… I feel some male attitude coming back.
Okay… what have I learned today?
- If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
- Ignoring rule number 1 should only be proceeded by backing up your crap.
- For those who are too lazy or too confident to pay attention to either of the first two rules, this advice: don’t dick around with it… dummy.
- Don’t be a cheap bastard and use RAID striping instead of buying a full sized disk (unless you’re dealing with data that is totally expendable).
- It takes a really long time to rip 870+ CDs… you don’t want to imagine having to do it twice.
- The perceived time it takes for Windows to start up increases in logarithmic proportion to the amount of data you think you have just lost.
- System restore can save your butt.
- If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. (that deserves mentioning twice)
Okay, what ruined my day you ask? This morning, before going into work, I did a quickie web search to see if there were Vista-compatible drivers for my RAID card. This weekend I plan on installing Vista on my home machine and I realized I needed to lay some groundwork first… like making sure there were drivers for the various bits of hardware I have. So, there are Vista drivers, Yay!
So, genius boy here decides to download and install the new driver at 7:30 in the morning before going to work. Heck, it’s for the card I have, no need to worry about something going wrong (sure, it seemed perfectly reasonable at the time). A quick install and reboot later and my 500 gig music drive is suddenly two 250 gig, unreadable drives. I almost cried.
Knowing I had to go to work and didn’t have time to futz with the damn thing I just shut down, kicked myself, packed up to go to work, then kicked myself again.
The worst part of it all was that as soon as I wasn’t focused on a task at work my mind would wander and …
“CRAP!!!! I SO SCREWED MYSELF!!!!”
If I had only bought two 500 gig drives instead four 250 gig drives the failure would have been no big deal… I’d have had two identical copies of my data (see rule number four above). Given my RAID array wasn’t fully bullet-proof (and running just fine, thank you very much) I really shouldn’t have even played with it in the first place (see rule’s number one and three). And so on…
All day I kept re-living my idiocy. As soon as I could reasonably leave work I came straight home (panicking again every time my mind would wander at a stop light), dropped my coat just inside the front door and ran straight upstairs to sit down in front of my computer… the machine which I had so unceremoniously raped this morning.
I tried a couple of things, each requiring what seemed a stupendously long reboot time. It’s amazing how painful it is to watch what usually seems a reasonably quick boot time when you’re imagining your entire CD collection going through a digital paper shredder.
In the end I did what I should have done first thing this morning, I used system restore to put my machine back in the state it was before I installed the drivers this morning. Well, actually, what I should have done first thing this morning was poke myself in the eye with a pencil, and then kick myself for even considering updating the drivers for my RAID card when there was nothing wrong with it’s operation to begin with, followed by poking myself in the other eye to ensure I was unable to see well enough to screw myself.
Honestly, sometimes I have the common sense of a small soap dish.