michael’s thoughts

As I have mentioned on here, I have been taking a few classes at the local community college.  One of the unexpected benefits of being enrolled as a student is that I have access to the community college library.  The physical library itself is fine, but what’s really cool is that I have online access from home to all manner of databases, full text news articles, academic journals, even LexisNexis.

To subscribe to all of these services individually would be far more than the cost of taking a single class.  It’s a great benefit even though I don’t really have the time or inclination to do much independent research.  Maybe I’ll start?

Last week I wrote that I was trying out MacJournal as an authoring tool.  While I liked MacJournal for offline private journaling, it didn’t really work for updating this site.  I’ve downloaded MarsEdit version 3.0.3 to see if it fits my needs better.  So far it does.

The MarsEdit screen is automatically divided into a top and bottom section to compose items before and after the “cut”.  It reminds me of years ago when I used the Clarify CRM software which had a top/bottom split window for public and internal case comments.  It’s a good design.

I haven’t figured out a way to embed YouTube videos using the rich text editor but I can switch to the HTML edit view to post an embed tag.  I’d like a little more native support for such a popular video sharing support, but I can live with it.

MarsEdit does have good support for posting draft versions, categories, and tags.  I think it will work well for me as an offline composer.

Today’s digest covers such exciting topics as Chicken of the VNC, Sequal Pro, Open Source GIS with MySQL and PostgreSQL, and the Khan Academy.

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I always intend to update this web site more frequently, but for short updates I tend to just post on Twitter or Facebook. And for longer updates I often start writing something and then get side tracked. So I’m going to try something different and start posting a periodic, perhaps weekly, digest.

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I have been excited about the prospect of eInk readers for a long time.  Back in January of 2006 I wrote about looking forward to the Sony Reader but expressed that a tabloid sized version that would allow me to read periodicals is what I really want.  It looks like Amazon’s upcoming Kindle DX will finally realize that dream.

I’m a fan of books.  I read a fair amount and I like having a bookshelf of paper volumes.  I’m not sure that I would use an eInk reader to take the place of my paper novels.  The value for me in an eInk reader is in periodicals and PDFs of technical manuals.

I have a paper subscription to The Economist but there is no value to me in having piles of previous weeks issues laying around my house.  I wouldn’t mind switching that to an eInk version.  And as I wrote back in January 2006 I’d love to be able to get trade press such as Daily Variety delivered electronically.

I also download a lot of PDF manuals for various technical products.  I don’t like to print them out as it’s a waste of paper.  On the other hand, I am not thrilled with reading lengthy documents on an LCD or CRT screen.  The main reason I haven’t bought an e-reader so far is that they have not had good native support for PDF.  The Kindle DX does support PDF without having to convert the file which is a must-have feature for me.

I haven’t preordered a Kindle DX but if the user experience reviews are positive once it’s released I think I may purchase one.  The selection of periodicals available in the Kindle store is limited but I hope it will expand over time.  It really seems like an excellent platform for regional trade papers.  If I could get Variety and the Hollywood Reporter on the Kindle I’d consider renewing my subscriptions to those papers.  Digital delivery is the future of news.  At least for me.

I bury the lead. A lot. Most of the time, in fact.

I am aware of the inverted pyramid structure for writing newspaper articles. I understand search engine optimization. I realize that getting to the heart of the matter quickly is good for eyeball retention and PageRank. But I still bury the lead on most of these posts.

This web site is my personal voice. And I don’t speak in the edited prose of a newspaper column.  I tend to speak in anecdotes and asides.  When I’m relating a fact I tend to turn it into an opportunity to tell a story.  To add context and opinion.  That’s just my personal style.

It doesn’t apply in all arenas of life.  When I write work emails or communicate verbally with colleagues on business matters I tend to be very concise and to the point.  But I don’t consider this web site to be a professional endeavor.  It reflects the style of my personal life, not my office communications.

I’ve thought about trying to write more in a more professional tone that would help out my search engine results and perhaps attract more readers.  But in the end, it’s not faithful to the spirit of what I’m trying to accomplish.  So I’m comfortable with the trade-off.

After being a satisfied Dreamhost customer for almost 4 years, I’ve cancelled my account.  I’ve moved my hosting over to GoDaddy and I find the whole experience very frustrating.  While there’s nothing wrong with GoDaddy’s hosting, they don’t offer all the features that Dreamhost does.  Frankly nobody does.  Which is why I stayed with Dreamhost even though their availability has suffered through periods of flakiness.

Unfortunately, I had to pull the plug last week.  There was apparently a problem with the file server that my account was hosted on, so they moved my shell account to another system.  Not sure that I really follow that logic, but whatever works for them.  Unfortunately, they never actually copied any of my content.

I opened 2 or 3 support requests last week and none were answered.  I followed the status updates on dreamhoststatus.com but they kept saying all problems were resolved.  Obviously mine was not.  So I finally pulled the pin and moved everything over to GoDaddy.  Amusingly, after I did that I sent one more email asking if Dreamhost planned to ever address my support requests.  I received a reply back stating that everything looked good from their end.  Of course, what they were seeing was my domains hosted somewhere else.  I again checked my shell account and…nothing there.

I’m really frustrated because some of the features I have been using on Dreamhost are just not available elsewhere.  Subversion support.  Using the auth_mysql Apache module.  And others.  Yet, what value are all those features if I can’t have the site up?

I don’t mind a little down time with budget hosting, but I don’t like being told that everything is up and operational and then having my support requests actively ignored.  So I’ve had to move.

I’m not sure what I’m going to do about the missing functionality.  It may be that the GoDaddy move is an interm step before going to a dedicated server.  But I really don’t want to spend the money on that right now.  So I’ll stay in a holding pattern and see how GoDaddy works for me.

I tend to split my time using Twitter and blog reading tools between mobile access clients and desktop web tools.  Unfortunately for most of these activities there is no way to keep the view consistent between the mobile and desktop views.  This could be solved by adding a “last read” value to the APIs and databases of these services.

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I was reading Robert Scoble’s post on social networking resumes the other day.  While I haven’t been laid off, I think his post is relevant to everyone.  But it got me thinking.  He makes the the suggestion that

Your blog is your resume. You need one and it needs to have 100 posts on it about what you want to be known for.

photo credit: adria.richards

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Last Saturday I went out to a birthday dinner for my friend Allen at a nice French restaurant in Great Falls, L’Auberge Chez Francois.  The restaurant is an institution in the DC area, but I’d never been there.  It’s a formal and pricey restaurant and I’d never had occaision to dine there, but Allen’s birthday was the perfect occaision.

The food and atmosphere really do live up to its reputation, and they included a 2009 planner with the dinner which is a nice step above the standard matchbooks.  I had one of the specials, a game plate featuring veal, bison, and quail.  It was worth the $75 price tag.  The lobster bisque was also great.  There’s a danger with lobster bisque of making it too rich, but theirs was great.  The chocolate souffle was also wonderful.

I’ll definitely have to go back, although at over $100 a plate it probably won’t be all that often.  Still, it’s a great place to celebrate a special occaision.  Their web site could use some improvement.  I wonder if they’d be interested in having Communications Tool & Die help them out.