December 2003 Archives

I've never really made or kept New Year's resolutions, but I think that goal-setting in general is a good idea. The beginning of a new year is a great symbolic time to set new goals for yourself and contemplate goals already met. With the accessibility attendant with web publishing, I'm going to declare my goals publicly this year so that I can get to them easily. Accountability is not an issue since I probably don't know you and you probably won't take me to task for not fulfilling them (except for you: J-Dog, T-Money, and L-Man). In no particular order:

1. Make a budget and stick to it. With the reduction in paid employment at the Brown household, we can no longer spend money as we make it. The need for fiscal responsibility has never been greater so it is time to craft that grown-up bastion, the household budget. I'll also make specific financial goals regarding debt reduction and so forth, but I'm not committing those to this site because it's none of your business.
2. Get things done. I've done a first pass at Getting Things Done and I really like the principles involved. It suits my style better than any other time management system I've encountered. I just need to reread the book for clarity, set up the way that's best for me, and start a new habit. At some point, I'll probably also post a review here since I've got a lot to say about the book.
3. Read How To Raise a Brighter Child, finish Parent Effectiveness Training, and read Liberated Parents, Liberated Children. Though my daughters are only two months old now, they'll be walking toddlers in no time. I want to read these three books because I want to give them every advantage that I never had.
4. Reread Atlas Shrugged. I've read this book many times and I'm about due for a refresher.
5. Create FourBrowns.com. I'm paying $19/month to host the site, so I've got to make something of it.
6. Migrate bbrown.info to Zettai, including all content. Same argument: I'm paying $10/month to host bbrown.info and $19/month to Zettai, which allows me two domains under the plan I'm on. It's going to be a herculean task since Blogger helpfully doesn't have an export tool and Plone doesn't have an import one. That's just for the blogs! I've also got hundreds of pages of content. The good news is that once I get bbrown.info migrated and fourbrowns.com created then I'm going to upgrade my account to the plan that allows 10 domains. That'll be sweet!
7. Finish Love is Never Enough. I've read about half of cognitive psychologist Aaron Beck's fascinating book on relationships and I'm sold. He's got excellent advice for couples and he's much more reasonable—read: not hyperbolic—than Albert Ellis, who seems to tend towards self-promotion. Sandi hates the title, which I agree is a little over the top and was better when it was "Love is Not Enough," but she can't disparage the underlying message. I owe it to Sandi and the girls to try to be the best husband I can be.
8. Baby-proof the entire house. The time is fast approaching that the girls will be up and about. I want to be ready for it so they can explore at will without heightened worry.
9. Use Python to develop a Cocoa app. I've been learning Python for a few months now, though I haven't had an opportunity to apply my knowledge to any effect. It's a neat little language and, with the Objective-C bindings of PyObjC, I'd like to make a Cocoa-based app for Mac OS X in the coming year. Okay, that's a little ambitious so I'd like to at least conceive of such an app in the coming year. Perhaps I'll resurrect my Java program idea—jCommute—and make it with Python. Hmm.
10. Start a list of at least five viable business ventures for the future. After two months of parenthood, I realize that I'm not going to have time to actually start a business in the first year of their lives so I want to just prime the pump, so to speak. I'll act on the ideas in the next year or two.
11. Control my temper. Those that know me may be surprised to know that I have an uncontrolled temper, unless you know me really well. I think some of the previously mentioned books will help me to be a more contemplative—read: less reactive—person. Sandi and the girls deserve an even-keeled husband and father. More importantly, life is too short to waste the psychic effort on letting things get to you.

That's a lot of resolutions and goals, I'll admit. I'll have a wrap-up in a year and we'll see what I've accomplished. Best of luck to me.

[UPDATE (1/6/04): More thoughts on New Year's Resolutions.]

Just got a word of warning from the OmniGroup people that OmniWeb 5.0 will enter a public beta on February 2, 2004!!!

Quoth the PR lady: "We WILL, however, be showing off saved browsing sessions, updated bookmarks, page marking, improved shortcuts, site-specific preferences, and more. Oh, and a little thing called tabs that just a few (billion) people have been asking for."

OmniWeb has been my default browser since 4.5 came out, even though I really like tabbed browsing. It just wasn't enough to edge out shortcuts and the advanced URL completion of OmniWeb. I can't wait to test it out!

[UPDATE: Reviewing the announcement page with a bit more scrutiny, I see that it's going to have the ability to save state (called workspaces) as well as an integrated RSS reader. The discussion over at Macslash brings more details, including video of tabs in action. Holy cow! That tab action is sweeter than Safari.]

[UPDATE (1/1/04): More pics here and mirrors of the three videos here.]

[UPDATE 2 (1/1/04): Think Secret has a page up now.]

[UPDATE (1/5/04): Slashdot article submitted by yours truly with some interesting information. I sent it in on January 1st, but I guess it takes awhile for them to move on these things.]

[UPDATE (1/24/04): Your Mac Life has an in-booth interview and demonstration of OmniWeb 5.]

[UPDATE (1/27/04): ArsTechnica has a forum topic up that spans four pages and involves Dave Hyatt and a guy from OmniGroup. Really interesting.]

Food for thought. I wrote a curmudgeonly version entitled "It's a Girl's Gone Wild World!" earlier this year.

I'm hopeful that these proposed amendments aren't mere words appended to an ersatz constitution. "Private property obtained legally shall not be violated" is a pretty good statement, though legally devoid of meaning without proper judicial interpretation. It's easy to think of how its meaning could be perverted (and subverted) by kangaroo courts with political motivations.

I like it. [from Rule of Reason]

PEER (Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility) has recently assailed the administration's ostensible faith-based parks initiative. I'm not a big fan of the group, but this clearly violates the separation of church and state.

After watching a documentary on Ronald Reagan (and reading from his letters), I remember thinking that he seemed a lot more religious than I remembered as a youth. Ayn Rand correctly pointed out his religious leanings back in 1981, but I guess I just never noticed it at the time. His stance against the Soviet Union and his economic policies just had me spellbound, I suppose.

Interestingly, George W. Bush patterned his presidential bid after Ronald Reagan's, targeting many of the same issues and striking the same tone. He is also, I think, much more vocal in his religiosity than Reagan ever was publicly. Bush's faith-based initiatives have directly tried to insinuate religion into many previously-secular spheres of public life.

What makes the present situation more troubling is that Bush is quite probably going to win the 2004 election and both his inability to try for a third term and Cheney's likely lack of interest in a presidential run could embolden him to step up his religious patronage in order to cement his fundamentalist legacy. As an avowed atheist, I can't help but be dismayed at the prospect of another inch gained in the slope towards theocracy. But what can one do? The Republican Party isn't going to nominate someone other than Bush, the religious tenor of the campaign isn't raising the hackles of voters, and the crop of Democratic candidates all want the federal government to enter more areas of private life—excepting, of course, the bedroom—with edicts.

I know in my heart of hearts that the battle for liberty and individual rights does not take place in the context of an election or eight years, but the prospects have never seemed dimmer. Privately, though, my life has never been better and I feel like my future is brighter than ever. I guess I will just have to retreat into the private sanctuary and comforting cocoon of family and work.

That time rolls around again this year. We all celebrate it in our own way; there's even some dispute about its origins.

Happy Festivus, everyone!

There's a strange ad on Yahoo! lately indicating someone named Bill's displeasure at the loss of his lawn gnome and an accompanying web site that is painful in its forced amateurness. A quick check on Technorati indicates that quite a few bloggers are wondering about its strange origins.

However, the URL from the Yahoo! ad indicates that this is a campaign by Hewlett-Packard—I thought they've gone to HP after the Carly Fiorina board fight—so it is clearly an astroturf campaign designed to excite comment from bloggers. Hopefully, it'll fail miserably since it's so trite.

[UPDATE: Oh and the 800 number is a dead giveaway that there's some deep pockets bankrolling this thing.]

Google now can track packages, find patents, look up FAA plane IDs, and look up FCC equipment numbers. I have no idea why they've added the last two, but the first two are pretty handy.

Good section on the process of naming a company and good tools as well.

Last night, we were driving down the Carefree Highway due to the necessity of a horrible detour caused by a fatal accident that closed Cave Creek between Deer Valley and Pinnacle Peak Roads, thereby preventing us from entering our subdivision in any convenient way. We were going about 55 or 60 mph when Sandi started screaming, "Cows! Cows! Cows!" I understood her to mean that there were cows in the road but I couldn't see them at all because of my poor night vision—the fact of which got me permanently medically rejected from the military (all branches).

Then all of a sudden I saw them enter the light path of my left headlight. A herd of three cows was crossing the highway maybe ten feet in front of me. Luckily, I was able to swerve in time to avoid the first one—who was also the biggest of the bunch—but not in time enough to avoid completely freaking out.

My heart was racing for the remainder of the fifteen minute ride as my mind played out the scenario of smashing into a bovine wall and catapulting my unbuckled wife through the windshield (she was feeding one of the girls, who had been screaming as if she had last ate a week ago). I'm glad that we avoided the collision and I'm especially glad that Sandi looked up from feeding when she did because I may not have seen the herd in time.

And yes, this is an altogether too common occurrence in the northern reaches of the great metropolitan city of Phoenix. Sandi's been late for work because there were cows loose on Cave Creek, a major thoroughfare. In fact, the north side of Pinnacle Peak Road is fenced off as range land.

"History is the laboratory of philosophy."

That's a pregnant and profound thought. It's what got me into history after I couldn't complete my philosophy degree. It perfectly captures the importance of history and the relationship of the past to philosophy.

The one problem with the above quotation is that I have no idea its source. It's been so long since I've seen it that its origin is murky. I honestly can't remember whether I came up with it or read it somewhere. I've searched Google using every possible combination, to absolutely no avail. If I came up with it, then I'll be exceedingly proud of myself but I can't bring myself to claim authorship.

Does anyone know of the quote or its origin? Leave a comment or send me an email. I'll be in your debt.

After reading this article about security on the Mac being no better than Windows, I can't help but note this recent vulnerability that allows a site visited in Internet Explorer to make a link appear to go to a trusted domain while actually transferring you anywhere it wants even in the status bar. I tried this out at work and it works quite well. Luckily, the fixes are easy and more satisfying.

And Dave doesn't get the vulnerability at all. (Here's the original text for when he changes it to make him appear less thick: "As Don recommends, I did a View Source. This is what the URL looks like. With a quick glance it looks like it's from Microsoft, but you're actually viewing a page at zapthedingbat.com. This isn't entirely new. I'm not sure what the %01 is about. I guess it's a problem if it's the action attribute of a form element, where you can't see the URL. Takeaway: look in the Address part of the browser window when you're typing into a form and if it's the wrong place, hit the Back button and resume your life.")

[UPDATE (12/15/03): Security pundit Richard Forno has a response to the PC Magazine article mentioned above.]

[UPDATE (1/15/04): January's security update is out and strangely this ain't fixed.]

[UPDATE (1/30/04): Spoke too soon! Microsoft's got a fix available: "Do not click any hyperlinks that you do not trust. Type them in the Address bar yourself." Problem solved!]

Reason just posted a list of "35 heroes of freedom." It's definitely the only list where you'll ever find Dennis Rodman listed after Ayn Rand outside of some alphabetical listing of celebrities. I think they could have easily pared it down to, oh, ten but they obviously needed to make 35 since it's their 35th anniversary of publication. I think the list was in earnest but it's disheartening to see the lightheartedness with which they approached such a weighty matter.

It's also a resounding indictment of the libertarian circus tent methodology.

As I was transitioning from the Squaw Peak Parkway to the Loop 101, I had to merge with the other lane. I saw a space in front of a souped up Bronco and so I worked my way up to it by the time the two lanes became one. Apparently, this space was reserved for the Bronco and no one was allowed in it because he immediately sped up and tried to force me out of there. I continued on until I made it in there—much to his dissatisfaction.

The remainder of my short time on the Loop 101 was spent with a close up view of his radiator grill in my rear view mirror. That is, until he swung to my side. Then he let loose with a torrent of obscenity that I could barely make out with my closed window. His lady friend probably got a great view of the man she's got though I'm sure this isn't the first or last time she's seen that side of him. I'm guessing that he was trying to bait me into rolling down my window but I just waved, mouthed some talking of my own, and generally ignored his rantings. And then the object of his attention became clear as the full Thirstbuster hit my window: I guess he got frustrated with trying to score an inner car hit and figured that the outside was as good as he was going to get.

At that point, I burst into laughter and I think that made him madder. What sort of reaction can you give to a screaming man who's just thrown his drink at your car? It's just amusing to me that someone could get so wound up over merging. What a waste of your life and energy!

Today I continued my lunchtime activity of rollerblading—err, inline skating—and I saw a lot of interesting stuff.

For any Phoenicians reading this, I work at 48th Street and Washington. I skated up to Van Buren and east on Van Buren until I got to the parking lot across the street from Phoenix Municipal Stadium. I discovered this rollerblading venue earlier this week and it is a true gem because it's completely vacant, not particularly debris covered, has multiple elevations that make for speedy driving, and a pedestrian bridge to connect to the stadium that is exhilirating to skate down. The parking lot has a special meaning to me because I used to visit the site in my early childhood since it once was the location of Legend City, Phoenix's only major amusement park that closed in 1983.

From the parking lot, I continued down Van Buren and skated alongside the Phoenix Zoo. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a historical marker about fifty feet from the sidewalk in the middle of the desert. Moseying over to it, I saw an original plaque indicating that this was the site of the Hunt Bass Hatchery and that it was built by the Works Progress Administration (WPA). I recalled reading a history of Papago Park as I continued along and saw some of the original hatchery lagoons behind the Zoo's fencing. These lagoons are off-limits to the public, but you can see them if you're on the sidewalk. As I rode along I also noticed the markings on the sidewalk that bore the imprint of "WPA 1937"! These were the original sidewalks! Amazing how well they've stood up in the 65 years since their construction.

Van Buren by this time had turned into Mill Avenue and I continued along to Moeur Park. Two things that I found was a weird marker next to the sidewalk that read "Arizona Highway Department 1956" with an elevation reading of 1189' or thereabouts and a Frisbee golf course adjacent to Moeur that I had never known was there.

Hanging out at the corner of Mill Avenue and Washington, I prepared to start the return trip to my work. The ride back was uneventful, but I found an interesting island of swampy area in the desert that I'd like to check back on someday. I also got to spend some time pondering Tovrea Castle. Some things I noticed as I leisurely rode alongside it were that the caretaker's cottage had no windows and was rather dilapidated, that the castle's color was a vibrant cream, and that one of those huge billboards was laying vertically on Tovrea's grounds without its lengthy pole. That last piece of information was rather odd since Tovrea is a historic landmark and it seems like a weird place to store such a billboard.

If you're a Phoenician, you might appreciate the length of this journey and the interesting things that can be found almost anywhere in our great city. You might also appreciate how this is the one time of year when the previous narrative wouldn't be filled with exclamations of heat exhaustion and perspiration. I'm enjoying it as much as I can while it lasts.

If you're not a Phoenician, the moral of this story is that your city is probably just as filled with treasures and history and that you should really endeavor to seek them out. The feeling of such a geographic and temporal connection is exciting and not to be taken lightly. Enjoy your environs!

There's an insightful interview with Ward Cunningham on wikis over at Artima. I can't say that I'm fond of wikis, but I'm beginning to understand them more after reading that interview.

Okay, Episodes 1 and 2 sucked bad. By the swirling rumors about Episode 3, I can't see how it could be any worse and it sounds a far sight better. I wasn't sure how George Lucas was going to pull off the transition from Episode 2 to Episode 4, but this conjecture seems reasonable enough. I'm actually excited to see Episode 3, replacing the resigned indifference I had previously felt.

Best comment from the Slashdot discussion: "I find your lack of bandwidth disturbing."

As a liberal-arts major working in a field unrelated to said major, I second Alex Tabarrok's advice. Well said! Many of my colleagues constantly lamented the poor pay of an academic and considered it an indictment of our society—but one of many so considered I assure you—that historians' works didn't sell better and that their influence was so marginal. I was always glad for it, knowing their views and opinions, but it always struck me how envy-ridden they were.

I'd wager that it's precisely because they didn't have real jobs outside of their teaching assistantships and probably never had. Insulated in the ivory tower, it's easy to construct castles in the air and weave unreal theories. You get paid whether your ideas are ludicrous or sound. In fact, you just may get paid more for more controversial and "avant-garde" espousals. The real world (by which I mean the business world) just isn't like that.

Many of my fellow academics were positively riddled with disdain for their students. They saw the lack of acceptance of their ideas among their pupils as a sign of the students' mental deficiencies, hidden racism, or conservatism. Never once did it occur to them that their views were preposterous or that their premises inconsistent with reality. I'm not suggesting that they were crazy because they disagreed with me, but they were just so unfounded and derivative—unfounded in reality and derivative of the scholars they read.

I, for one, would love to start a business around history. The melding of my interests and the entrepreneurial spirit of the venture would suit me well. But the difficulty is that I can't come up with any good businesses. I've got some great ideas, but I can't figure out how to make money at them. And I'm not going to do the one without getting the other straight.

Just think about who would pay for historical work to be done and you'll see my trouble. Corporations have a lot of money but producing historical accounts of them would probably take more time and money than they'd be willing to spend. Plus, the research might unearth unpleasant facts or be heavily restricted due to the necessity of protecting trade secrets. Individuals pay for history quite frequently, but that's in purchasing books. How to get them to pay more generally is a tough nut. I'll crack it in due time, but it's going to take thought.

Looks like my long-term goal of living to be 200 isn't as far-fetched as everyone I've ever told it to seems to think. "They laughed at me the first time I wore jeans with a sport coat."

Buy your digital camera and media now while they're cheap because things are going to get a little more expensive soon. Microsoft, everybody's favorite (by default, largely) operating system manufacturer, is going to start requiring the licensing of the FAT file system for consumer electronics. They're pretty reasonable about the whole thing, if you consider 25¢ per unit (cap of $250,000) reasonable. Seems expensive to me, especially for media.

As the site itself notes, this file system has been free for the last 27 years. Why they start charging now—which seems like a trial balloon—is unexplained. I suspect that once the coffers start filling up on this one they'll spread the love to other users of FAT, especially one fruit-themed company near and dear to my heart.

Do they have a right to do this? Of course. Does it seem like bad form to charge for something as basic as this after decades of giving it away to all comers? Definitely.

I've been thinking about passwords lately since we've been needing a lot of them at work and I've been registering at a lot of sites. I want to make my passwords of sufficient strength and variety to insure that the compromise of one does not open up every site, that the passwords are usable, and that the breaking of any one of them is exceedingly difficult.

My current practice is to use a schema consisting of a random number of a variant length sandwiched between two random English words. For example, a random password would be something like "cozy31hardly" or "hold988legacy". The words are chosen as different parts of speech with little association—I keep trying until I get two words without linkage. The number varies between one and four digits, depending on the importance of security. It seems pretty secure because a dictionary attack wouldn't really address two words separated by a random number and the possible combinations are insane (sorry, my algebra is rusty but I figure with 600,000 words in the English language and a possible 1,000 random numbers the possibilities should be astonomical). It's also pretty easy to remember two words and a number so I have a majority of the passwords memorized, even though they're also being stored securely in my Keychain. Of course, I've just committed a cardinal sin of password security by even relating my schema but I can always alter it at any time by including foreign words (I know French pretty well, Spanish less so, and enough German, Esperanto, Russian, and Italian words for this purpose) to confound the hackers of the world. Plus, I readily violate my schema in random instances with an alternate system for less stringent security requirements—stringency being defined by methods known only to me. So I feel pretty confident that knowing this schema would not help a password hacker on any particular site.

Others have expressed a preference for random words geeked up and with random punctuation thrown in. So, hypothetically of course, a password might look like this "!g00dn3$$*gr4c10u$%" which reads poorly as "goodness gracious." This schema makes hackery impossible, I daresay. The combinations approach infinity since the word choice is unknown, the punctuation is possibly present in a variable number of instances, and the l33tspeak is occasionally random. The problem is that it's impossible to remember and it's difficult to type, so you end up writing it down to communicate it or copying and pasting it into dialog boxes—meaning that it has to be available in plaintext somewhere.

So what's the best system? Do you go for inscrutability even though it's value is diminished by reduced memorability and communication? Or do you go for ease-of-memory even though it's marginally easier to crack? I think the latter is a better approach because the value of password complexity becomes asymptotic after a certain point. Is my system complex enough? Good question. Got any thoughts, gentle readers?

[UPDATE (12/4/03): In the comments, regular reader Jay Schwartz linked to a MacOSXHints post about a password security analyzer present in Panther's Keychain Access utility. Someone made a poignant comment in that thread about the nature of password security: " Really, a good password is protecting you against stray eyes seeing what you've typed. It's very uncommon to try an [sic] brute force guess someones password." Well put. Brute force attacks are overrated once you get beyond the obvious dictionary checking and educated guessing.]