mobrec

So
So much for my previous prediction that OS X 10.5.2 and Aperture 2.0 would surface during PMA. But around a week and a half later they are both a reality — 10.5.2 appeared in Software Update last night and this morning Aperture 2.0 was announced ($99 upgrade, $199 full). There is also a 30 day trial of 2.0 available on the Aperture site, so if you can't wait (or are curious) you can have a look today.

Still no support for the new Olympus E-3 RAW format though (grumble).

Technorati Tags: aperture, apple, mac, osx, photography, software

So
Reading through this post on The Key Difference Between Developer and Architect Roles I was reminded of a few other key attributes that successful architects possess that developers and (certainly not ex-consulting firm wanks) tend to not have.

Once upon a time I was an architect working on an large packaged application installation along with two ex-consulting types. These guys had zero technical background and were basically good for creating and following task lists with no understanding of what the tasks were (or could be). Any conversation with them ended with them drolly replying 'well that's nice but it's not in scope'. Problem is that if they had a modicum of technical/architectural skill, they would have recognized that every suggestion was in scope and had the recommendations been acted on would have saved the project enormous amounts of time and money.

For example, their task list said that they should rubber stamp the scripts they had for data transformation and movement. Well, in the ten years since the original scripts had been written, the company had acquired an ETL tool that would have made creating, modifying and maintaining the data movement portions much easier and quicker. But, no, that was 'out of scope'. The 'task list architects' spent something like 700x the estimate for the ETL effort to essentially build a hairball-esque shell script-based hack that failed miserably. The team spent huge amounts of time and effort trying to maintain the scripts. On top of that, they had huge data consistency issues because the scripts barely worked in one scenario let alone have the flexibility to accommodate new requirements.

That was just one of their many 'successes' on the project. They basically did the same with the reporting for the system. Rather than use the 'out of scope' modern BI tools, they 're-used' the 10 year old scripting hacks. Another huge dose of fail. And again with environment (mis)management. Somehow through their utter ineptness they 'required' something like 39 copies of the production environment to complete their testing. Thirty nine. The mind boggles.

But this is what you get when people who can barely write a requirements document (but have 'experience' from big consulting) adopt the title of 'architect'. Real architecture requires enough vision and understanding to know when to make both strategic and tactical decisions that enable a project to deliver a quality result. Real architects understand what changes can be made and why, without greatly (if at all) effecting scope. Task list 'architects' can't see beyond their own tick lists.

Technorati Tags: architecture, enterprisearchitecture, software, technology

So
Fun to watch once or twice. Please, no one take this as a lesson in how to design a site using flash. Please.

Technorati Tags: flash, fun, webdev

So
Finally (well from 2005), a study from MIT on the Effectiveness of Aluminum Foil Hats. Worth reading the whole thing to get a sense of the detail involved, but it's all right there in the abstract :)

Among a fringe community of paranoids, aluminum helmets serve as the protective measure of choice against invasive radio signals. We investigate the efficacy of three aluminum helmet designs on a sample group of four individuals. Using a $250,000 network analyser, we find that although on average all helmets attenuate invasive radio frequencies in either directions (either emanating from an outside source, or emanating from the cranium of the subject), certain frequencies are in fact greatly amplified. These amplified frequencies coincide with radio bands reserved for government use according to the Federal Communication Commission (FCC). Statistical evidence suggests the use of helmets may in fact enhance the government's invasive abilities. We speculate that the government may in fact have started the helmet craze for this reason.

Technorati Tags: conspiracy, tinfoil, fun, technology

So
Wired has a brief article that shows just how far high speed photography has come in the last 120 or so years. We've gone from the (then miraculous) 6 millisecond (10^-3) shutter speed of the galloping horse in 1887 to the current 110 attoseconds (10^-18) image of electron drift. Amazing stuff.

The photo that they have of a nuclear blast reminds me of an electron microscope image of some nasty virus/mutagen. It really is a fractal world.

Technorati Tags: digitalimaging, history, photography, technology

So
Britannica blog's posting on The Problem of Data Storage points to how complicated archiving and retrieving things in the digital age has become. Before it was enough to preserve tablets or paper — now this is greatly complicated by the various digital formats that house our data and how the formats themselves are subject to disuse (in many cases making the enclosed data unavailable as well). PDF is a glimmer of hope; we shall see how it holds up to the test of time.

As anyone who has tried to migrate data from an ancient floppy can tell you, retrieving that information, though only 25 years old, is no easy task. (The floppy disk itself is a nearly extinct medium, for that matter.) The mere difficulty of retrieving old data provides the rationale for Adobe’s now-standard PDF (portable document format), documents that can be read and printed across any operating system. What is more, Adobe developers maintain, “ten years from now, and into the future, users will still be able to view the file exactly as it was created”—meaning that fonts, layout, and illustrations are locked into the document and cannot easily be changed, unlike documents created with standard word processing software. (For more, see Adobe’s white paper “PDF as a Standard for Archiving.”)

On a larger scale this reminds me of the excellent book The Clock Of The Long Now by Steward Brand, that covers designing (and documenting) a clock that works on a massive scale and is intended to run for thousands of years.

Technorati Tags: archiving, britannica, history, ideas, storage, longnow

So
I had heard stories similar to this over the years, but they took place mostly in Japan, not the US. Using only the photos found on a camera left in the back of a cab, the owner is tracked down and the camera returned. It's the feel-good story of the year (so far).

Technorati Tags: fun, gooddeeds, photography

So
The rumors around Apple software updates have been flying, including a much anticipated (some would say overdue) update to the Aperture photo software. Of course, there was a rumor that Apple were going to release a huge 10.5.2 update last Friday. That update didn't materialize as planned.

My guess is that we will see both in the coming week as PMA provides the perfect forum for the announcement (and served as the forum for announcing Aperture 1.5). The 10.5.2 update will likely be released at the same time or in advance of Aperture. The key thing about the OS update is that that is how Apple supports new cameras and file formats. This tying of the camera support to the OS release cycle has been a point of bitter grumbling for photographers who like to jump on new cameras as they are first released.

I am hoping for support of the Olympus E-3 in the 10.5.2 update, as well as an announcement from Olympus of a price drop or at least a rebate on the E-3 as I would very much like to upgrade from my existing E-500 before my next trip.

If PMA truly is the backdrop for these announcements, all will be revealed this week.

Technorati Tags: aperture, apple, cameras, photography, software, olympus, e3

So
Wired has an interesting article and interactive graphic that sheds some light on all of the bots and scrapper and whatnot that descend on new blog postings. It is amazing how a whole background industry has grown up around blogging. I think it also show the great lengths that people will go to try to benefit themselves from work that isn't their own.

Technorati Tags: blogging, internet, visualization

So
The title is a play on Ubiquitous Computing except I don't necessarily want devices interacting with each other, I want me to be able to interact with all of my data sources. Recently I realized that general purpose desktop apps are becoming more irrelevant for me because they do not have an online and/or mobile access point. By way of example, here are a few desktop apps that I have traded in over time for online counterparts:

NetNewsWire is a fine feed reader for the Mac, but I gave it up for Google Reader the instant that there was a viable version of Reader. I found that I spent too much time trying to reconcile the feeds that I had read online, on my phone and in NNW. Google Reader gives me one place to manage and access them all.

After the initial coolness factor of scanning barcodes via iSight in Delicious Library it soon became clear that Delicious was just another island of personal data that I couldn't use in the way that I needed/wanted. I exported the book information from Delicious and imported it into the very fine (and then fledgling) LibraryThing and never looked back. LibraryThing liberated my book info and provides both online and mobile access to my data. I would love to find a 'LibraryThing for music' where I could upload/synch my iTunes music info and be able to browse and search it on the go.

StickyBrain (now SohoNotes) was a handy utility for capturing random bits of info from the web and other desktop apps. Same problem though — I found myself wanting to have access to the data on the go but there was no good option. Granted they did have a Palm conduit that you could export notes to which was great if you carried a Palm device. I have begun using Google Notebook more and more for this type of data collection because I can get to the notes when I need it. SohoNotes would be 1000% more useful to me, if it could synch with Google Notebook and thereby provide mobile/online access.

I almost bought OmniFocus when it was discounted during the beta. But again I found that it's lack of an online capability was too much of a limitation for my purposes. RememberTheMilk has been a great GTD solution for me over the years. It is simple to use and does everything that I need it to do without being tied to desktop app.

The next step is to move beyond the apps and get straight to the heart of the matter — the underlying data. The ideal model is that the data is online and available via a common set of services in addition to a lightweight UI. Another bonus would be if the data is also stored in a format that allows it to be repurposed beyond its original use (XML?, RDF?). Consider the possibilities: Mashup your own data. Have a unified set of tags across all of your data.

Granted there will always be things that you want to do on a dedicated app (edit photos, video) but for 'everyday tasks' (schedule, todos, bookmarking, contacts, notes, presence, etc) it just makes sense to be able to take that with you. And 'taking it with you' could be as simple as desktop apps having the ability to export/sych information into your online personal data hub. Until the personal data hub becomes a reality, there is still a great deal of value in exporting to existing web applications.

Technorati Tags: google, ideas, librarything, mobile, webservices, webtools