Tim's blog

Using backupmytweets.com to add Twitter stream to Google calendar

timc+livejournal@divide.net — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 12:34:59 GMT

It's been bothering me that twistory.net doesn't show my whole Twitter stream. backupmytweets.com is an excellent free service, but they don't generate iCalendar format. So I tweeted to both, challenging them to solve my problem. No joy. Then today I woke up at 3am with an idea. I don't need a mashup. All I had to do was use my XML backup to generate the iCalendar data! It was fun and only took me a few hours in Perl: bumtXML2ics.pl. I love the line in All About Steve about cruciverbalists creating crossword puzzles that have three attributes: they're solvable, they're entertaining, and they sparkle. My Perl script was like that for me.

I hadn't bothered to upload my backups to my Website, but getting Google calendar to work motivated me, because it requires a URL to subscribe to. I guess I could import directly, but I like the way Twistory does it. So now my stream is available in the following formats: HTML, XML, JSON, and iCalendar. The link to my stream in a format that Google calendar can subscribe to looks like this: www.google.com/calendar/render?cid=http://home.pcisys.net/%7Etbc/09/twitter.tbc0.ics. Thanks for the idea, Twistory!

Technorati tags: twitter, icalendar, perl.

My 'Recent Nomination to Presidential Who's Who' leaves me feeling like a VIP!

timc+livejournal@divide.net — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 21:20:04 GMT

David Baldaro wrote, "My 'Recent Nomination to Presidential Who's Who' leaves me feeling like a VIP!." I tried to comment. His PHP didn't give me any feedback, so I don't know if I was moderated or what. I tried twice. (Sorry for the dupe, David.) My comment didn't appear, so I'm going to blog about it myself. Let's see which one Google likes better. :)

I'm a VIP, too -- I was addressed by first and last name. The email is only three days old. (I've been busy and didn't read it until today.) From markanthony.mcguiness at gmail.com. Scam sites: rm.resultsmail.com and 2009presidentialwhoswho.net. I know the exact source: zoominfo.com. I gave that site my email on 2007-10-28, traced using the technique I used (sub-addressing) before I started using Sxipper. Tip to readers: use Firefox to browse the Web, and use Sxipper to generate disposable email addresses that can be traced.

A book list

timc+livejournal@divide.net — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 00:26:29 GMT

A friend introduced me to this list of books. For fun (practicing my ad hoc data munging skills to put it in a table), I filled out the information. Movies don't count. This is about reading books. I think it'll be a good conversation starter.

Read it? (Yes or blank)	Comments	List Ranking	Title	Author
yes	reading now	1	Pride and Prejudice	Jane Austen
yes	as a youth	2	The Lord of the Rings	JRR Tolkien
		3	Jane Eyre	Charlotte Bronte
yes	only the early ones	4	Harry Potter series	JK Rowling
yes	as an adult	5	To Kill a Mockingbird	Harper Lee
yes	many times as an adult	6	The Bible	various
		7	Wuthering Heights	Emily Bronte
yes	as a student	8	Nineteen Eighty Four	George Orwell
	on my blacklist	9	His Dark Materials	Philip Pullman
		10	Great Expectations	Charles Dickens
		11	Little Women	Louisa M Alcott
		12	Tess of the D'Urbervilles	Thomas Hardy
		13	Catch 22	Joseph Heller
yes	only some as a student	14	Complete Works	Shakespeare
		15	Rebecca	Daphne Du Maurier
yes	as a youth	16	The Hobbit	JRR Tolkien
		17	Birdsong	Sebastian Faulk
yes	as a young adult	18	Catcher in the Rye	JD Salinger
		19	The Time Traveler's Wife	Audrey Niffenegger
		20	Middlemarch	George Eliot
		21	Gone With The Wind	Margaret Mitchell
yes	as a young adult	22	The Great Gatsby	F Scott Fitzgerald
		23	Bleak House	Charles Dickens
yes	started but didn't finish, planning on it	24	War and Peace	Leo Tolstoy
yes	in college	25	The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy	Douglas Adams
		26	Brideshead Revisited	Evelyn Waugh
yes	grade 12	27	Crime and Punishment	Fyodor Dostoyevsky
yes	yes, I think, as a student	28	Grapes of Wrath	John Steinbeck
yes	as a young adult	29	Alice in Wonderland	Lewis Carroll
yes	yes, I think, as a student	30	The Wind in the Willows	Kenneth Grahame
		31	Anna Karenina	Leo Tolstoy
yes	as an adult	32	David Copperfield	Charles Dickens
yes	only the early ones	33	Chronicles of Narnia	CS Lewis
yes	loved the movie	34	Emma	Jane Austen
		35	Persuasion	Jane Austen
yes	as a youth	36	The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe	CS Lewis
yes	yes, but why the hype	37	The Kite Runner	Khaled Hosseini
		38	Captain Corelli's Mandolin	Louis De Bernieres
		39	Memoirs of a Geisha	Arthur Golden
		40	Winnie the Pooh	AA Milne
yes	as a student	41	Animal Farm	George Orwell
yes	on my blacklist	42	The Da Vinci Code	Dan Brown
		43	One Hundred Years of Solitude	Gabriel Garcia Marquez
		44	A Prayer for Owen Meaney	John Irving
		45	The Woman in White	Wilkie Collins
		46	Anne of Green Gables	LM Montgomery
		47	Far From The Madding Crowd	Thomas Hardy
yes	on my blacklist	48	The Handmaid's Tale	Margaret Atwood
yes	as a student	49	Lord of the Flies	William Golding
		50	Atonement	Ian McEwan
yes	enjoyed it as an adult last year	51	Life of Pi	Yann Martel
yes	as a youth	52	Dune	Frank Herbert
		53	Cold Comfort Farm	Stella Gibbons
		54	Sense and Sensibility	Jane Austen
		55	A Suitable Boy	Vikram Seth
		56	The Shadow of the Wind	Carlos Ruiz Zafon
		57	A Tale Of Two Cities	Charles Dickens
yes	as a student	58	Brave New World	Aldous Huxley
		59	The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time	Mark Haddon
		60	Love In The Time Of Cholera	Gabriel Garcia Marquez
		61	Of Mice and Men	John Steinbeck
		62	Lolita	Vladimir Nabokov
		63	The Secret History	Donna Tartt
		64	The Lovely Bones	Alice Sebold
		65	Count of Monte Cristo	Alexandre Dumas
		66	On The Road	Jack Kerouac
		67	Jude the Obscure	Thomas Hardy
		68	Bridget Jones's Diary	Helen Fielding
		69	Midnight's Children	Salman Rushdie
yes	as a young adult	70	Moby Dick	Herman Melville
yes	as an adult	71	Oliver Twist	Charles Dickens
		72	Dracula	Bram Stoker
		73	The Secret Garden	Frances Hodgson Burnett
		74	Notes From A Small Island	Bill Bryson
yes	on my list, need a block of time to concentrate	75	Ulysses	James Joyce
yes	last year	76	The Inferno	Dante
		77	Swallows and Amazons	Arthur Ransome
		78	Germinal	Emile Zola
		79	Vanity Fair	William Makepeace Thackeray
		80	Possession	AS Byatt
		81	A Christmas Carol	Charles Dickens
		82	Cloud Atlas	David Mitchell
		83	The Color Purple	Alice Walker
		84	The Remains of the Day	Kazuo Ishiguro
		85	Madame Bovary	Gustave Flaubert
		86	A Fine Balance	Rohinton Mistry
yes	was read to me as a student	87	Charlotte's Web	EB White
		88	The Five People You Meet In Heaven	Mitch Albom
yes	as a young adult, will read again	89	Adventures of Sherlock Holmes	Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
		90	The Faraway Tree Collection	Enid Blyton
		91	Heart of Darkness	Joseph Conrad
		92	The Little Prince	Antoine De SaintExupery
		93	The Wasp Factory	Iain Banks
yes	a couple years ago	94	Watership Down	Richard Adams
		95	A Confederacy of Dunces	John Kennedy Toole
		96	A Town Like Alice	Nevil Shute
		97	The Three Musketeers	Alexandre Dumas
yes	as a student	98	Hamlet	William Shakespeare
yes	was read to me as a student	99	Charlie and the Chocolate Factory	Roald Dahl
		100	Les Miserables	Victor Hugo

Hey, Zumbox, now what?

timc+livejournal@divide.net — Tue, 26 May 2009 07:42:58 GMT

The Zumbox blog has an entry called "I've Got My Zumbox. Now What?," but comments are closed. I just got set up tonight. I am asking the same question: now what?

I heard about Zumbox from Triple Pundit. The idea is simple: register your postal address at zumbox.com, and you can receive mail targeted at that address. The mail is, of course, electronic. They've done the work to validate 150 million U.S. addresses already. You may have mail waiting for you. It's ideal for organizations (both for-profit and non-profit) to send you mail that they would normally pay to prepare, print, and have delivered by your postal carrier.

Individuals can send 50 pieces per month for free. I tried sending a postcard to demo addresses listed at the Zumbox site, but they're not valid.

One obvious question regarding person-to-person mail is, why not send email instead? I can give you one reason. Let's say I want to contact all my neighbors. I don't know all their email addresses. With Zumbox, I can do it electronically. There's a certain attraction to the semi-privacy of sending email to a postal address instead of an email address. I don't know their email address, and they don't know mine. But using Zumbox we can still communicate electronically.

So here are my first impressions:

I need a way to query whether an address has been claimed. At other social media sites, I'm asked to upload my address book to see which email addresses are active at the social media site. Zumbox should do the same. Then automatically add those addresses into my Zumbox contacts list so I can easily send them Zumbox mail.
Looking the other way, Zumbox should list the organizations who are set up to send mail to me. It's self-evident if the organizations I care about are using Zumbox. I would be getting mail from them. But maybe I want to support organizations who have gone paperless. For example, if L.L. Bean was set up, but Eddie Bauer wasn't, then maybe I want to do business with the former and not the latter.
Building off the previous idea, Zumbox should also have an easy way for me to petition the organizations I care about to start using Zumbox. I should be able to search for organizations, and check a "me, too" box if someone has already petitioned them. This will be powerful ammunition for Zumbox's marketing efforts if they can show organizations that their constituencies are asking for them.
Here's another variation of this idea of using demand from constituencies to drive businesses to use Zumbox: give me an email address where I can forward all of my opt-in commercial email to Zumbox. Then Zumbox can tally the pieces they're getting and market Zumbox to those commercial email producers. This could be powerful bait -- do you want to manage a list of email addresses, or do you want to reach your customers literally where they live? Having a postal mailing list guarantees no bounces, and it allows detailed analysis based on ZIP codes. Thus Zumbox could become a powerful competitor against other opt-in commerical email services. I would encourage organizations with whom I already have relationships (Amazon, eBay, etc.) to use Zumbox to reach me. I am more likely to read ads, etc. in my Zumbox account than I am in my regular mail account. I want my email inbox back! I know email is essentially free and Zumbox charges $0.05 per piece. But don't you think both sides would be willing to deal?
Zumbox needs to be thinking in both directions. They're obviously set up for electronic correspondence. But it's advantageous to connect to the paper world during the transition to paperless. They should create some attractive postcard designs. Greeting cards, too. I would pay to have these pieces printed and delivered to my friends and family. They get snail mail from me, and Zumbox gets viral marketing paid for by me! How about linking up with electronic greeting card companies?

Finally, I'll point out that if this idea fragments, chaos could destroy it. I'm not going to deal with multiple providers. The U.S. Postal Office should have thought of this first. or FedEx. Or UPS. But Zumbox is in the game. I wish them the best of luck.

a philosophical approach to biological enhancement

timc+livejournal@divide.net — Thu, 21 May 2009 00:02:14 GMT

I'm not even done listening to the Philosophy Bites podcast featuring Allen Buchanan, who discusses biological enhancement with Nigel Warburton. I had to make a few comments immediately. This is one of the most fascinating conversations Dr. Warburton has hosted! Very fresh and thought-provoking subject! Humans have been enhancing themselves for millenia. Literacy is an enhancement. Caffeine is an enhancement. Now biology is revealing new vistas of human enhancement. What are the ethical implications?

Two other personal observations: First, I was surprised to learn that prosthetic legs give runners such an advantage that they are now disqualified from competing. I plan to look into that more. Second, this is one of my favorite podcast episodes for no other reason than because Dr. Buchanan uses the word "err" and pronounces it correctly. :)

An armed society is a polite society; disarm society and only criminals will be armed

timc+livejournal@divide.net — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 17:59:55 GMT

On this tenth anniversary of the Columbine tragedy, I saw Time's story mentioned at Twitter about Americans' refusal to give up their guns. "Whatever momentum the Columbine killings gave to gun control has long since petered out." See "Ten Years After Columbine, It's Easier to Bear Arms." My first reaction was, "And this is a bad thing why?" I will always remember driving past New Life Church in Colorado Springs only hours after the tragedy was ended by a trained, armed parishioner who stopped a gunman with her concealed handgun and saved lives. The cowardly gunman was only wounded. Instead of fighting back, he committed suicide. Read Jeanne Assam's story. Why didn't Time talk about that example? We all know why. There's only one side to the debate in the mainstream media: they think the only way to reduce violence is to disarm society. I'm coming to the opposite conclusion: I'm seriously considering honoring the Columbine victims by taking firearms training, purchasing a handgun, and applying for a concealed carry permit. We all have a civic duty to protect the weak from the strong.

I'm willing to keep an open mind, but it seems to me that an armed society is a polite society. If there were more stories of trained citizens stopping homicidal gunmen, there would be a certain level of deterrence. Gunmen not deterred risk experiencing suicide by a concealed weapon wielded by a trained citizen. I would feel differently if there were news reports of trained, law-abiding citizens causing loss of life. But what we have now are murderers preying on the unarmed. We can reduce the likelihood of future Columbine tragedies by doing our civic duty and producing more New Life Church stories.

Balancing Twitter with the rest of my life

timc+livejournal@divide.net — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 15:04:21 GMT

Since blogging about becoming a Twitterer I have learned a little more. I gave up social media for Lent. (That was a very liberating and inspiring experience. I dedicated the time I had been spending socializing online toward communion with God.) Now in Easter season, I'm rethinking how I use social media. I am trying to focus the stream I'm following to a level that I can actually keep up with. I got the idea from Yammer. Not sure how long it will last, but for now both my @alum.mit.edu and @hp.com streams are quiet enough that I can read every update from everyone. To accomplish that feat with Twitter meant unfollowing several people. I expect to be more bold about following new people and unfollowing others. I haven't found the balance yet, but the initial results have been a great relief of stress. I am already using Twitter search more so I can explore what strangers have to say about things I care about. And I feel closer to the people I still follow. I actually engage in conversation, which is what Twitter is all about.

How to Plant Your Garden

timc+livejournal@divide.net — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 07:28:44 GMT

My dad sent me a copy of a poem illuminated with some attractive graphics, so I decided to share it with my readers. It goes like this:

How to Plant Your Garden

First, you come to the garden alone,
While the dew is still on the roses

For the garden of your daily living,
Plant three rows of peas:

   1. Peace of mind
   2. Peace of heart
   3. Peace of soul

Plant four rows of squash:

   1. Squash gossip
   2. Squash indifference
   3. Squash grumbling
   4. Squash selfishness

Plant four rows of lettuce:

   1. Let us be faithful
   2. Let us be kind
   3. Let us be patient
   4. Let us love one another

No garden is without turnips:

   1. Turn up for meetings
   2. Turn up for service
   3. Turn up to help one another

To conclude our garden we must have thyme:

   1. Time for each other
   2. Time for family
   3. Time for friends

Water freely with patience and cultivate with love.
There is much fruit in your garden because you reap what you sow.

-- Author Unknown

I have several reasons for posting this poem on my blog even though you can find it at several other places on the Web. First, I like the graphics so much that I made my own illuminated copy of the poem at http://purl.org/net/tbc/garden/. Have a look. It's simply but attractively formatted so that you can easily copy & paste it into email. Second, I want to see how my copy spreads compared with others. Is an initial link from a blog to a PURL enough for Google to give my copy good placement? Third, since it seems that there's no stopping people from forwarding chain email, I'd like to model how to do it. Note how my illuminated copy is formatted, and note how I cite my sources. If you know the author of the poem or the designer of the graphics, please let me know. Finally, note how I add myself to the chain: "HTML formatting by Tim Chambers 1E4AF729D5CEFFD0." It frustrates me when I get chain email without sources. And note how I couple this blog entry to the copy that's suitable for forwarding. I'm sure it's a lost cause, but if I can convince just one person to improve Internet communications then it was worth the time I spent writing this blog entry.

And in case you're wondering about "1E4AF729D5CEFFD0" -- it's my GPG fingerprint. It's my totally unique identifier. Who else but me would bother including that particular hexadecimal number on Web pages? So far I've been able to use it to ensure that Google returns content unique to me with 100% accuracy.

Why my username is either tbc or tbchambers or tbc0

timc+livejournal@divide.net — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 18:54:35 GMT

Today I had occasion to explain the origin of my username, so I decided to blog the answer so I can point others to it in the future.

I've been tbc on the Internet since 1981. Those are my initials. My computer account at university was automatically assigned tbc as the login ID. I've never been convinced of any reason to deviate from this convention. In 1994 AOL started infesting the Internet with hundreds of thousands of induhviduals and other naïve folk who didn't know what they were getting into. Services started springing up, and rules proliferated. I often had to use tbchambers because tbc was too short. Occasionally, tbc was already taken. I'm a computer scientist by training. We always start counting from zero. So I started using tbc0.

I've Become a Twitterer

timc+livejournal@divide.net — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 01:15:09 GMT

I've had a Twitter account (tbc0) for almost 8 months. I tried to use it as advertised, tweeting about what I was doing. But that got boring quickly because none of my friends were on Twitter. I tried to enforce my own intended use by blocking people I didn't know who started following me. I wasn't sensitive to the way Twitter has evolved.

November 30th I got stuck in a snowstorm heading home on I-70. That's the day I discovered search.twitter.com. I found weather information that confirmed my decision to get off the road for the night. I explored with other search terms and started to see the possibilities. I learned that hashtags (Twitter user | Web site) facilitate ad hoc conversations.

During the snowstorm I caught on to how Twitter is being used. It's not just for people you already know. It's a way to connect with new people. I started noting my observations as #twittertips, and etiquette opinions as #tweetiquette.

My interests fall into a number of categories: (1) Twitter has exploded since I first joined, and a variety of people I'm acquainted with outside Twitter now tweet; (2) accomplished people I know and respect; (3) conservatives related to the Top Conservatives on Twitter (#tcot) and Rebuild the Party (#rebuild) movements; (4) Twitterers in Colorado, especially @COTweeters and #cstweetup (about half in the real estate industry); and (5) high-tech / social media.

It's also worth pointing out that one doesn't have to follow Twitterers to enjoy their streams. John Cleese and Wil Wheaton fall into that category for me. (Caution: their language is not family-friendly.) I wish William Shatner would tweet more. I also admire Chris Brogan, who "uses Twitter at volume." (tinyurl.com/followaton). When I checked today, he was following almost 23,000 (including me), had over 27,000 followers, and over 28,000 updates.

I maintain my Tweeple page at lilurl.org/mg97dg so that I can make sense of the Twitterverse.

Update 2009-04-20: Balancing Twitter with the rest of my life.

The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008) is too preachy

timc+livejournal@divide.net — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 07:08:15 GMT

4 stars out of 10.

I wanted to give this film zero stars for being so preachy. But I have to give it 4 stars for the excellent casting (Reeves, Connelly, Bates, Cleese, and others), cool Gort, and overall good Hollywood production quality. I would've given the movie an extra star if only they had found a way to fit "klaatu berada nikto" into the remake script.

I can accept that the "stop being mean to one another" message of the original needed an update, but "stop killing the planet" wasn't convincing. It made me think of "The Arrival" starting Charlie Sheen. (That film wouldn't play today, though, because it portrays global warming as not being humanity's fault.)

MySpace, stickiness, friendship vs. fanship / fandom, Basia and The Idea of North

timc+livejournal@divide.net — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 22:47:01 GMT

Today a friend sent me a stumble that started, "I know this music isn't your cup of tea..." The music was ok, but he was right -- not my cup of tea. What he couldn't have known is that I had never visited a musical group's MySpace page before. It struck me right away as a brilliant idea. The group gets an explicit measure of the size of its fandom, and the stickiness of the page is helped by the group's music playing in the background. I searched and found my two favorite artists (don't force me to choose!): Basia and The Idea of North. This is the first good use I've found for my MySpace page. I'm impressed that MySpace even allows categories of friends. I have two "artist" friend requests pending. Thanks, Eric!

using synergy for sharing mouse and keyboard

timc+livejournal@divide.net — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 16:22:20 GMT

I'll be using two computers quite a lot this month, so I set up Synergy this morning. It took me a while to figure out how to make it work in my office. Maybe my experience will be helpful to others.

I haven't been able to get domain names working on my home network, so I have to talk to my systems by IP address. My mouse and keyboard are attached to eddie; marvin is the client. The Synergy troubleshooting page shows the errors I was seeing: "Server already has a connected client with name 'XXX'" and "Server refused client with name 'XXX'." But it was only by trial and error that I figured out I need to register my client by IP address and set up an alias for the IP address to the client name. Here's the config that works:

section: screens
        eddie:
        Top:
        10.100.326.102:
end
section: links
        eddie:
                up = Top
                right = 10.100.326.102
        Top:
                down = eddie
        10.100.326.102:
                left = eddie
end
section: aliases
10.100.326.102:
 marvin
end

Then I just connect to eddie using its IP address (e.g. 10.100.326.101). I'll bet synergy would have worked out of the box if my domain name resolution was working they way it's supposed to. I know I should fix that, but for now I'm simply glad I have Synergy working.

Acquire knowledge about finances / economics!

timc+livejournal@divide.net — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 22:42:24 GMT

I listened to This American Life's show #365: Another Frightening Show About the Economy, and I've been hooked on NPR's Planet Money ever since. It feels like the Sword of Damocles is looming over 2009, doesn't it? So consider my advice: take charge of your own financial education. Subscribe to the Planet Money podcast. I have no reason to feel more secure, but at least I feel better, armed with the new knowledge I'm acquiring from the Planet Money staff.

Addendum 2009-02-06. The Planet Money blog (link above) is a busy page. The podcast is a little hard to find. Here's a direct link: Read about the podcast series.

Guilty about my musical tastes

timc+livejournal@divide.net — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 16:05:31 GMT

Yesterday I entered "Go-Go's" into last.fm's artist box, and I haven't listened to anything else since. I'm rocking out to a bunch of hits from my youth -- and some I'm hearing from the first time. See what I've been scrobbling in the last 24 hours: http://www.last.fm/user/tbc0.

This is a new dynamic for me. I like a lot of these songs, but I'm embarrassed to click on the "Love it" button. I like to think my tastes are more refined: Tchaikovsky, Vivaldi, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven. Or at least more esoteric / high-brow: Copland, Gershwin, Basia, Idea of North. I guess I'm just a prig.

Google maps let me down!

timc+livejournal@divide.net — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 02:44:05 GMT

All I get right now is "Loading..." Yahoo! Maps is up, though, and so that's what I used. Yeah, I know, this is more like a tweet than a blog entry. But I can't find any of my closest friends on Twitter, so I'm not using it at this time.

Google is too fair about map results

timc+livejournal@divide.net — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 22:53:47 GMT

Today I googled "malibu map" and didn't find an entry from Google Maps or Google Local in the top 50 results. I think they're being too fair. I don't think anyone seriously believes that Google skews their search results, but here's a data point to prove they don't. That's reassuring. But I think they should at least sponsor a link to their own results. I'm also telling Google directly via their "Dissatisfied with your search results?" utility. You should do the same. I wish I had a million dollars for every idea I came up with for improving Google's results. I'd have, like, $5,000,000. :) For instance, did you know there was a time when Google didn't even use redirect links on search results. They would return their results and simply link to the actual site. What a bonehead decision that was! At some point they did change their system, so now when you click on search results you're actually updating the Google database before they redirect you to the site you want. I think I mentioned that idea at http://shouldexist.org/, but the site's gone dormant so I can't check. I wonder if that's the kind of idea Google employees get stock options (or outright grants) for giving their company. Anyway, back to mapping, let's see how long it takes Google to figure out that they're missing an opportunity to improve stickiness.

Technorati tags: seo, google.

reflections on suffering

timc+livejournal@divide.net — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 01:57:42 GMT

As I was reading the Bible recently, Jeremiah 10:19 stood out for me: "Woe to me because of my injury! My wound is incurable! Yet I said to myself, 'This is my sickness, and I must endure it.'" The prophet Jeremiah writes his lament to personify how all of Israel ought to interpret their suffering -- it is a consequence of their sin. That's a little heavy for one individual to bear. I am forgiven through the work of Jesus that was finished on the cross; however, I do find Jeremiah's words to be a helpful reminder of my condition. I decided to add them to the top of my cancer journal to set the tone for what follows. This blog entry is a repeat of the journal entry that I added today. I thought it might spark some discussion.

I don't accept that God always metes out specific punishments for specific sins today. ("You mean, you're open to the idea that sometimes he does?" Yes, why not? He continues to be active in history, so it may suit his design to get someone's attention in a dramatic way. Too many people tell stories with gratitude about something terrible happening to them that got their attention. They are also prone to quote Romans 8:28. He's no longer known as the wrathful God of the Old Testament, who had to hold Israel -- "a stiff-necked people" -- together long enough for the promised Messiah to come. Jesus reveals God to be the loving Father who disciplines his children for their own good.) Some suffering is a natural consequence of specific actions. For example, if you smoke, you greatly increase your risk of lung cancer. It's scientific cause and effect. If someone chooses to drink and drive, and she t-bones a car and kills an innocent child, the resulting suffering can be traced to that drunk driver's irresponsible choice.

Other suffering cannot be explained so easily -- and much suffering cannot be explained at all. But we are promised that in the new heaven and new earth there will no longer be any suffering. When it cannot be explained any other way, I accept that suffering in this world can be traced back to the The Fall, and I take comfort in the promise that suffering is absent from God's ultimate plan for his creation.

Science can explain many mechanisms of cancer, but it's natural for those who have it to wonder, "Why me?" It's hard to find a satisfactory answer to that question. When I need comfort, I can turn to Jeremiah's words.

best onion rings I've ever had

timc+livejournal@divide.net — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 18:19:09 GMT

I ate in the café portion of the South Fork Saloon & Café in Elbert, Colorado. Elbert is so far off-grid I couldn't get a cellphone signal (Sprint). (The saloon does have a pay phone, which does work -- I used it.) It was my first visit. The café is tiny -- room for no more than about 30 people. The saloon is larger. There's a "bikers welcome" sign out front, and I can imagine it's popular when the weather is better. But today it was cold and snowy. When my son and I walked in we had the whole place to ourselves. (A couple did come in later, and we had a nice chat.)

I don't know how the proprietor does it, but she served the best onion rings I have ever had. The batter was tasty, the onions were thick and had good flavor -- not too bland but not too spicy. The chili was home-made and award-winning (look for the trophy in the east window).

If you're ever in Elbert, give those onion rings a try.

Skype using Ubuntu 7.10 on nc2400

timc+livejournal@divide.net — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 04:17:56 GMT

I set out on a quest tonight. I haven't been able to get Skype to work previously. I gave it another shot tonight and succeeded. I hope this is helpful to other HP nc2400 users. Audio out was fine. The problem was the microphone. The nc2400 doesn't have an internal mike, so I bought one for $7 at Wal-Mart. It didn't work by default, though. I was successful using ALSA, not OSS. I had to open System -> Preferences -> Sound to get to Sound Preferences. I set Audio Conferencing Sound capture to ALSA and Default Mixer Tracks Device to HDA Intel (Alsa mixer). I also had to twiddle the volume control (right click on the Volume Applet and select Open Volume Control). File -> Change Device also gives HDA (Alsa mixer) as a choice. Then I had to click Edit -> Preferences and check all the tracks to be visible. Finally I could see that the Mic settings were muted. Unmuting them was the last hurdle I jumped over. Just to be sure my system was configured correctly, I selected Applications -> Sound & Video -> Sound Recorder. There are some reports of it returning an invalid configuration. I already worked around that with Sound Preferences -- everything has to be either ALSA or OSS. In Sound Recorder, Record from input: Microphone and voilà! The system confirmed the mike was active. At that point the Skype test call worked fine. Elapsed time: 45 minutes.

x11vnc and x2vnc

timc+livejournal@divide.net — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 05:40:36 GMT

Tonight I was sitting in bed with my Windows box and wanted to look at my Linux display, which is in my home office. It's been a while, so it took me some time to remember which application to fire up. I googled and didn't get the results I was hoping for. But in the process, I learned about another cool app that will come in handy. If you find this blog entry via Google or some other search engine, leave a comment if this brief explanation saves you some time.

What I wanted was x11vnc. You fire it up on your Linux box, and it exports the X display via VNC protocol so you can connect to it using vncviewer. But I started by thinking I wanted x2vnc. But x2vnc is a twist on the opposite. When you have a Linux box and a Windows box in your office, use x2vnc to control the Windows display using your Linux keyboard and mouse. The mouse bounces between the two displays intuitively when you move to the edge of the display.

Who are the real copyright pirates?

timc+livejournal@divide.net — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 04:41:18 GMT

I don't have it all figured out. I'm reluctant to steal music. Tonight I found Courtney Love's emotional appeal. Then I read an accusation that she ripped off the ideas presented by Steve Albini. That reminded me of the first artist whose arguments in favor of digital downloads: Janis Ian. I also watched Nat Segaloff's short film "Steal This Disc" tonight. And I skimmed through Glenn McDonald's explanation for why he has started stealing music.

I don't have the energy to become an activist for this issue right now. I don't buy very many new CDs. I already have most of the music I want. I'm sure that scares the music industry. Too bad. So sad. I wait for sales at Sound and Spirit. They have me pegged as a Christian listener, but I've been buying mostly jazz and classical. A little bluegrass, too. Filling out my collection. Go ahead -- visit www.last.fm/user/tbc0 to see what I like to listen to. I'm in this for long haul. I'm watching the clueless music industry writhe as they're made irrelevant. Sure, some of them will eventually figure out how to adapt. But the industry's changing. Artists can connect directly with the fans now. That's a Good Thing. Makes the markets more efficient.

I'm waiting for more artists to wise up enough to say NO when greedy record labels try to get their signatures on unfair contracts. I'm waiting for more artists that I like to go independent. I'm waiting for more opportunities for me to buy their music directly from them.

Who knows? Maybe someday all that will be left of the music industry is a ride at Disneyland.

Poem: I know who I am

timc+livejournal@divide.net — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 22:50:04 GMT

I received this poem via email. (Widen your browser window to get the correct visual effect.) I like it. I can't track down the author. Do you know who wrote it?

I KNOW WHO I AM
I am God's child (John 1:12)
I am Christ's friend (John 15:15)
I am united with the Lord(1 Cor. 6:17)
I am bought with a price(1 Cor. 6:19-20)
I am a saint (set apart for God). (Eph. 1:1)
I am a personal witness of Christ (Acts 1:8)
I am the salt & light of the earth ( Matt.5:13-14)
I am a member of the body of Christ(1 Cor 12:27)
I am free forever from condemnation (Rom. 8: 1-2)
I am a citizen of Heaven. I am significant (Phil.3:20)
I am free from any charge against me (Rom. 8:31-34)
I am a minister of reconciliation for God(2 Cor.5:17-21)
I have access to God through the Holy Spirit (Eph. 2:18)
I am seated with Christ in the heavenly realms (Eph. 2:6)
I cannot be separated from the love of God( Rom.8:35-39)
I am established, anointed, sealed by God (2 Cor.1:21-22)
I am assured all things work together for good (Rom. 8: 28)
I have been chosen and appointed to bear fruit (John 15:16)
I may approach God with freedom and confidence (Eph. 3: 12)
I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me (Phil. 4:13)
I am the branch of the true vine, a channel of His life (John 15: 1-5)
I am God's temple (1 Cor. 3: 16). I am complete in Christ (Col. 2: 10)
I am hidden with Christ in God (Col. 3:3). I have been justified (Romans 5:1)
I am God's co-worker (1 Cor. 3:9; 2 Cor 6:1). I am God's workmanship(Eph. 2:10)
I am confident that the good works God has begun in me will be perfected (Phil. 1: 5)
I have been redeemed and forgiven (Col. 1:14). I have been adopted as God's child(Eph 1:5)
I belong to God
Do you know
who you are!?

"The LORD bless you and keep you;
the LORD make His face shine upon you
and be gracious to you;
the LORD turn His face toward you
and give you peace."
Numbers 6:24-26

An Open Letter to the USA's FTC: Stop Ecard Phishing Roaches

timc+livejournal@divide.net — Sat, 30 Jun 2007 15:57:47 GMT

To Whom It May Concern:

I visited your Web page today for the first time: http://www.ftc.gov/phishing

Now roaches are hijacking the powerful emotional pull of ecards to lure their victims. I have received many variations of the enclosed -- all with wicked Web servers hosted at different IP addresses.

I appreciate the value of the FTC ecard, but I hope it gets updated to help innocent victims resist this new insidious invasion.

Sincerely,

Tim Chambers
Colorado

Technorati tags: phishing.

-------- Original Message --------

Subject:	You've received a postcard from a family member!
Date:	Fri, 29 Jun 2007 01:27:10 -0400
From:	AmericanGreetings.Com <bxe@abraxaspetroleum.com>
To:	<tbc@divide.net> [a spam honeypot address]

Good day.

Your family member has sent you an ecard from AmericanGreetings.Com.

Send free ecards from AmericanGreetings.Com with your choice of colors, words and music.

Your ecard will be available with us for the next 30 days. If you wish to keep
the ecard longer, you may save it on your computer or take a print.

To view your ecard, choose from any of the following options:

--------
OPTION 1
--------

Click on the following Internet address or
copy & paste it into your browser's address box.

http://nnn.nnn.nnn.nnn/?15e8517a32e6b9ea6878b15d7703a

[anytime the Web site consists only of numbers, it's phish-bait -- no legitimate enterprise does business with numeric web sites]

--------
OPTION 2
--------

Copy & paste the ecard number in the "View Your Card" box at
http://nnn.nnn.nnn.nnn/

Your ecard number is
15e8517a32e6b9ea6878b15d7703a

Best wishes,
Postmaster,
AmericanGreetings.Com

James Roberts with LPM about my current mortgage

timc+livejournal@divide.net — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 22:01:36 GMT

I googled and didn't find a hit for those keywords. I got a phone call from a robot parroting those words. I hung up before I heard more. I'm getting tired of companies hiring robots to call me. Colorado has a law against phone solicitations, but maybe these cockroaches are exploiting a loophole?