03.20.06
Posted in miscellany at 6:59 pm by Nate Smith
Ok, stay with me on this one.
In a nutshell: Your next chocolate sundae (or substitute anything you like to experience, eat, or do) will never be as good as the last one you had.
The reason: The last sundae you had is a complete memory, a sum total of the experience. You don’t have the full memory of eating the sundae. or the experience until it is in the past. When you eat a Sundae (or enjoy any experience) you do it one moment at a time, or one bite at a time. Each portion building the memory. Anytime you consider the last sundae you ate, you are remembering the whole experience complete.
So your next experience is always colored by the expectations of the last experience and it will never live up to the first experience because you perceive an experience something one moment at a time, but your memory is of the whole experience.
A good reason to enjoy the moments as they happen.
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03.16.06
Posted in rant at 9:08 am by Nate Smith
Diet Mountain Dew has a new “tuned-up taste” as of March 8, 2006. Apparently they reformulated it with a mix of sweeteners and it now tastes more like regular Mountain Dew. How unfortunate. Read the rest of this entry »
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03.15.06
Posted in books at 10:15 pm by Nate Smith
I have 
probably read The War of the Worlds four times in my life and each time I have a new perspective on it. I read it most recently after my disapointment over Steven Spielberg’s recent production of “War of the Worlds”.*
During the most recent reading my attention fell to the religious struggles. The curate and his struggle with his faith in God. Is the cruelty of the martian invasion really part of God’s plan? How can a loving God allow something like this to happen. This was a part of the book that I just wanted to get through when I was 12 years old and reading this book.
H.G. Wells’ descriptions of the marians are amazing when you consider the time period he was writing in and the words available to describe them. Its easy to foget how groundbreaking his martians were now that they have been copied so many times since. The term martian itself probably came into use from this work.
The War of the Worlds is a science fiction classic. It has suspense, action, and over-arching moral themes. If you like science fiction - or want to find out if you do, this is required reading.
*In fact, there hasn’t been a decent treatment of The War of the Worlds yet. The 1950’s movie was a disapointment and the Spielberg movie, while effect-laden, didn’t capture the essence of the Well’s version. There is a low budget movie from Pendragon Films that probably comes closest to realizing the authors origninal vision.
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03.12.06
Posted in Windows/Microsoft at 9:19 am by Nate Smith
Microsoft has revealed its Origami computer specification, an ultraportable computer running a “desktop operating system”. The device, by itself, is going to be priced in the $600+ price range. Remember the flipstart? If you do Origami will look familiar to you.
If you’ve ever tried to use the web on a palm-size device like a blackberry or similarly sized devices you know how painful that can be, and if you have felt that pain you know you need a screen that is just a little bit bigger. The same goes for trying to edit a word document or work in excel on a windows CE type of device. The cut-down versions of the products do so much you can’t figure out why they didn’t go the rest of the way. Again, it is the screen size that brings the frustration. What good is it being able to see 16 cells in Excel or part of a paragraph in word?
Enter Origami, an ultraportable machine running Windows XP. (and how lame will it seem when Vista arrives?) Enough screen real-estate to browse the web and use excel, but a 3 hour battery life. Why bother?
Check out a device like the $300 Nokia 770 - Excellent screen with built in Wi-fi and Bluetooth in addition to a web-browser that includes Macromedia Flash, a PDF viewer, and RSS newsreader and the capability to play audio and video. It doesn’t even try to show presentations or edit excel documents.
Maybe Microsoft has something more in mind for the Origami, it will be interesting to see.
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03.11.06
Posted in rant at 9:23 pm by Nate Smith
This guy shows up all over the place in I.T. advertisements.
EVERYWHERE.
I’ve seen him with CDW, St. Bernard Software, Microsoft, simply everywhere. I think this poor guy might be the most over-used piece of clip art ever. If somebody could tell me what set of clipart he is in so I can avoid it I would be grateful.
Please, companies selling to IT people: find some new clip art, give this guy a rest.
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Posted in books at 1:51 pm by Nate Smith
Switching to VoIP is like a lab manual in many ways. It offers hands-on experience with VoIP technology through the use of Asterisk and projects within the book. Switching to VoIP is also a good complement to Asterisk: the future of telephony. many VoIP and Telephony technology and terms are explained. At least in enough detail to give you a basic understanding of the technology.
It was my hope to get a better understanding of CoS and QoS from this book, but unfortunately the treatment of these topics wasn’t as clear as it could have been.
The organization of the content of Switching also leaves a little bit to be desired as it seems a little haphazzard.
The writing style is very easy to read and explanations are generally very good.
If you want to learn about VoIP and Asterisk this is a great place to start, however if you are familiar with VoIP and telephony concepts and want to jump right into Asterisk configuration Asterisk: The Future of Telephony is probably a better match.
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Posted in books at 1:48 pm by Nate Smith
This was arguably the first Asterisk book to market and for many people it was the first “hands-on documentation available. The book borrows (and credits) heavily from on-line resources that were available at the time it was written.
I think there are other books better suited for Asterisk today, but this was the first to explain many concepts in detail.
(first edition)
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Posted in books at 1:03 am by Nate Smith
This is the book for Asterisk at this point in time. Asterisk is a fast-moving open source project so any book that tries to document Asterisk will, at best, only be a snapshot but this book does a very comprehensive job.
If you want to learn your way around Asterisk this book is one of the most authorative you will find.
There is a comprehensive reference on applications and other features that are part of asterisk.
I can definitely recommend this book as the one to use to get started in Asterisk.
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03.10.06
Posted in books at 12:51 pm by Nate Smith
I like this book. Joel is an excellent writer and his topics are applicable to the lives of many people who deal with software or software-like projects. I can’t say I agree with him on everything, but all of his discussions are thought provoking. His writing is conversational and enjoyable too, not dry like academic writings or an RFC.
My favorite chapter is the one that discusses hiring practices. Joel’s philosophy is to hire people who know how to learn. I couldn’t agree more with that.
Of particular interest to me was his discussion about starting from scratch or re-writing software when developing a follow-on to a product. Mr. Spolsky comes down in favor of starting with the existing codebase and improving it and does an excellent job of justifying it.
Joel also has a blog at www.joelonsoftware.com that he uses to test new ideas and scratch his expository itches. His blog is worth reading if you want to get an idea of the flavor of this book.
So if you develop anything that remotely resembles software, you owe it to yourself to read this book and challenge yourself with some of the ideas he presents.
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Posted in Uncategorized, paranoia at 12:39 pm by Nate Smith
Chicken McNuggets are strange. Little toasty shapes of greyish fluff with a taste similar to chicken. I have a theory about their source but, like most good *theories* it cannot be proven.
Chicken McNuggets are really some kind of genetically engineered chicken-flavored mushroom. They grow to exactly the right size and can be coated with batter and fried up as a McNugget.
I’m probably being paranoid, but if you get to see one again pull it apart and look at the “chicken”. I think you will agree there is something suspect about it.
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