Patent 7,929,907

A former colleague emailed me recently to point out that a patent application we had made several years ago at a now-defunct company had finally been granted: "Timing recovery scheme for satellite backhaul link" . This one is slightly less fatuous and much narrower than my last patent (which was so broad and meaningless that I'm ashamed to even link to it here).

This new patent was a mildly clever idea to get around a hardware limitation in a particular type of satellite modem system. I'd be surprised if anybody actually implements it. Circumventing the hardware limitation with hardware is not much more complicated than adding a connector. The method in this patent is a lot more complicated.


Jim on 01.19.12 @ 09:06 AM ET [link]

Nixon

The January 23, 2011 edition of the New Yorker uncovered this interesting quote from a 1959 speech by Richard Nixon. No additional commentary is needed.

"I think it would be a great tragedy...if we had our two major political parties divide on what we would call a conservative-liberal line. I think one of the attributes of our political system has been that we have avoided generally violent swings in Administrations from one extreme to the other. And the reason we have avoided that is that in both parties there has been room for a broad spectrum of opinion. Therefore, when your Administrations come to power, they will represent the whole people rather than just one segment of the people."

Jim on 01.18.12 @ 09:56 AM ET [link]

Touch

My Kindle e-reader has been my constant companion for the last 9 months or so. But I couldn't resist the new Kindle Touch model for only $99.

The main advantage over the previous K3 is, in my opinion, the touch screen. The touch interface is pretty well done, though anybody who expects iPad-like interaction will be sorely disappointed. Touch navigation is so much better than trying to diddle that little five-way controller on the K3.

The Touch still has the same 6-inch E-Ink screen as the previous generation of devices, for better or worse. And I quite like the E-Ink screen.

What to do with the old Kindle? I'm thinking about donating it to Ebooks for Troops, which sends them to US troops deployed overseas.

I also splurged on a nice leather cover with a built-in LED reading light. The light is powered by the Kindle itself via two small metal contacts inside the case.

Overall I'm quite pleased with this device and would recommend it to devoted readers.

Jim on 01.04.12 @ 03:15 PM ET [link]

Mint Linux

The siren call of another Ubuntu Linux release is difficult to resist. But Mr. Shuttleworth and company have decided that Ubuntu users must use their new Unity desktop in release 11.10. So after innocently upgrading my desktop and mail server machine to 11.10 I was chagrined to see Unity as my only choice.

Unity is a Gnome desktop designed to simplify the user experience as much as possible. That was the idea, anyway. My opinion is that it was designed to infuriate both beginner and advanced Linux users. The prior Ubuntu release at least provided a "classic" desktop option at login but, alas, that option is no longer available.

So what else to do. Move do another distro, of course! I chose Linux Mint (why not "Mint Linux"?) since I had heard good things about it. Mint turned out to be a variation of Ubuntu Linux (they use their repositories) which, in turn, is a variation of Debian Linux.

So I backed up my server, wiped several years of Ubuntu cruft off the disks, and installed Mint. After several hours of screwing around getting the Exim and Dovecot mail packages working again things were back up and running fine. Mint is a good distribution for us disgruntled Ubuntu users. Three thumbs up.

Jim on 01.01.12 @ 02:16 PM ET [link]

Religious Shift

The classic programming editor religious war rages on, pitting Emacs against Vim. For years I've been a diehard Vim user. But for the past week I've shifted my allegiance to Emacs just to test the waters. At work our group is 90% Vim and 10% Emacs users.

It took a couple of days to tweak my .emacs configuration file to get a comfortable configuration, but then again it took me as long or longer to tweak my .vimrc file. It also helped to reassign the caps-lock key as another control key - prevents pinky-strain.

Aquamacs seems to be the best port of Emacs to OS X. It supports full-screen mode, unlike straight Gnu Emacs, and I particularly like the default red cursor.

After one week, here are the things I like about Emacs:

• Buffers containing grep output or compiler output are treated just like any other buffer.


• Very flexible configuration, as long as you learn elisp.


• Most of the navigation key-bindings are also used by other programs - e.g. Apple mail, Chrome edit fields.


• No more forgetting if I'm in Insert Mode or Command Mode.


• TRAMP mode for editing remote files


• Editing and running Clojure is easy after starting a 'run-lisp' session.

And things I don't like about Emacs:

• The control key for navigation is still awkward. And switching between Control and Meta for page down/up is even more awkward. These can be remapped, of course, or I could use the actual page up/down keys.


• Tag searching doesn't present you with a list of locations like Vim. Instead, you need to walk through each possible tag match.


• etags gets confused by some structure definitions that use macros


• I miss the simple change-word, copy-word, and copy-line commands from Vim. I ended up adding my own copy-line.

Jim on 10.09.11 @ 10:53 AM ET [link]

State machine for my programming life

         +-----------------+                            +-----------------+
         |                 |                            |                 |
         |  Go Back        |                            |  Go Back        |
         |  To Haskell     |<---------------------------+  To Perl        |
         |                 |       What was Larry       |                 |
         +--------+--------+       thinking?            +-----------------+
                  |                                             ^
                  |                                 This is just|
                  | OMG!                            a verbose   |
                  | Monads!                         version of  |
                  |                                 Perl.       |
                  |                                             |
                  v                                             |
         +-----------------+                            +-------+---------+
         |                 |      I can't read          |                 |
         |  Go Back        |      what I just wrote.    |  Go Back        |
         |  To Clojure     |+-------------------------->|  To Python      |
         |                 |                            |                 |
         +-----------------+                            +-----------------+

(created with AsciiFlow)

Jim on 09.24.11 @ 05:49 PM ET [link]

Kindle Borrowing

Amazon has finally launched their Kindle library borrowing program. Participating libraries can now lend ebooks to patrons with Kindles. Up until now, my library would lend eBooks, but not in a format that could be read on the Kindle.

The process is surprisingly easy. I went to my local library website (the excellent Minuteman Library Network for the Boston suburbs) and browsed their list of available eBook titles. For each title you can see how many e-copies the library owned and how many were checked out at the moment.

I selected a book and a couple of clicks later the book was delivered wirelessly to my Kindle. The loan is for 2 weeks, with an option to renew if there are no other requests for the book. I wonder if the book will disappear after 2 weeks even if I have my wireless turned off.
Jim on 09.22.11 @ 02:17 PM ET [link]

Photo divestiture

In a frenzy of CraigsList activity, I sold nearly all of my high-end Canon photo gear and downsized to a single Canon G12. The motivation was mainly for portability. I found I was dreading lugging out the DSLR and the lenses, and would rarely carry my large camera on trips.

The G12 is a great little camera. It allows full manual control (without messing with menu buttons), can shoot in RAW mode, and has a hotshoe and an optical viewfinder. The optical viewfinder is pretty lousy, but it can be handy in those situations where bright sunlight makes the LCD unreadable.

I'm hoping that the quantity of pictures I take goes up, and the quality doesn't go down.


Jim on 09.20.11 @ 11:10 AM ET [link]

Throw Down Your Heart

It's not often that a movie makes you say "wow" out loud, especially watching at home on a small screen. But I found myself saying that over and over again while watching the excellent 2008 Bela Fleck documentary "Throw Down Your Heart" on Netflix streaming.

Banjo virtuoso Fleck (he always seems to get that sobriquet) visited several African countries to trace the history of the banjo and to jam with local musicians. There's nearly zero actual banjo history shown in the film, which is fine. Instead nearly the entire film is devoted to interviews with the African musicians and intense jam sessions.

The result is polyrhythmic bliss. Sometimes struggling to keep up with an unfamiliar genre, Fleck joins in with small groups of singers, marimbas, finger pianos, and other various stringed instruments. The film culminates in a visit to Mali, a country with one of the most sophisticated musical traditions. Once he finds his footing in the music, though, he blends in with the African musicians and often surpasses them, tossing in bits of jazz and bluegrass along the way.

Most of the sessions were recorded in high-quality audio as well as video, and there's a CD available by the same name with the resulting studio and outdoor recordings. The CD is also excellent, and has a lot more depth than the music on the videos, probably thanks to the extra post-production magic.


Jim on 09.11.11 @ 04:51 PM ET [link]

Pennies to heaven

You can find CoinStar coin-counting machines in lots of supermarkets around where I live. It's a highly convenient way to get rid of the jar of pocket change on your dresser. Until recently, the machines have also been a convenient way for CoinStar to collect 10% of your coins as a counting fee! This is one reason I've always avoided those machines like the plague, and done my own tedious hand-rolling of coins.

But I just recently discovered that you can receive gift cards from various merchants (Amazon, Star Market, iTunes, etc) from the machines, and for this service there is no fee. You can also donate all the coins to charity in the machines, also with no fee.

The CoinStar site also has a handy machine locater service that will not only locate all the machines in your area, it will tell you which services each machine offers - not all machines support gift cards.

Just tonight I took my big jars of coins to my nearest machine and walked out with a $118 Amazon gift card. (The machines don't actually give you a plastic gift card. They give you a receipt with a number to type into your account for credit). The whole process would have taken me only 5 minutes if it hadn't been for the two Chinese ladies in front of me returning $350 in change.

I also found an interesting hack for CoinStar machines. The process involves unplugging the machine from the internet before it spits out your gift card. This forces the machine to give you a cash voucher for the full amount. Needless to say, I haven't tried this hack.

Jim on 07.24.11 @ 08:47 PM ET [link]

Mmm...toast.

In 2000, the US Patent office awarded patent number 6,080,436 to a gentleman from Georgia for Bread Refreshing Method. This gentleman had re-invented the toaster.

Jim on 07.23.11 @ 10:55 AM ET [link]

What would you save?

I found this picture on the front of the NY Times site. You can see a man and a woman escaping from a bombed-out collapsing building in Oslo. The man is helping the injured woman, which is laudable. But what's more laudable is that he had the presence of mind to save his laptop, too!. "Gotta finish that spreadsheet for tomorrow's board meeting".

Jim on 07.22.11 @ 04:21 PM ET [link]

Cold Brew

Making cold brewed coffee requires almost no equipment. Some ground coffee, water, a coffee filter and something to hold it (I use a funnel), and a jar or large glass. The result is very smooth non-acidic coffee, perfect for serving over ice.

Here's the full recipe:

Fill the jar with 1.5 cups cold water and 1/3 cup ground coffee. Shake or stir.
Let the mixture sit for about 12 hours at room temperature.
Filter the result with a coffee filter.
Serve over ice, with milk, cream, or sugar as desired.
The coffee can be refrigerated for several days if you want to brew a big batch.

I haven't tried this reheated in a microwave yet, but I suspect the resulting hot coffee would also be excellent.

I happened to use a Guinness pint glass for the brewing last night, and the mixture looked exactly like, well, a pint of Guinness - complete with head.

Jim on 07.04.11 @ 09:40 AM ET [link]

RIP: ReplayTV

We just got notice that the service for our beloved ReplayTV will be discontinued as of July 31, 2011. ReplayTV is a Digital Video Recorder that was introduced around the same time as Tivo, but didn't survive the litigation storm nearly as well. ReplayTV was sold off a couple of years ago and was doing as little as possible to maintain their level of service.

So far it's been a fairly reliable DVR for standard-definition content. It doesn't support HD at all. I upgraded the hard disk several years ago and other than a reboot every month or so it has worked well.

After July 31, the ReplayTV unit will effectively be turned into a doorstop since there won't be any guide data. In principle you could still use it in manual record mode, telling it to record whatever is on channel 38 at 7:00pm for 1 hour, but this kinda defeats the whole idea of a DVR. It's so much nicer to just tell it to record all episodes of "America's Top Cake Hoarders".

There is a tool called WiRNS that can be run on a local Windows machine that will intercept the DVR's traffic to the ReplayTV servers and substitute its own data. The consensus seems to be that this will probably still work after July 31, though it remains to be seen. It would require me to run a Windows VM on my Linux server 24/7.

The other options are to either ditch broadcast TV altogether, or buy an HD Tivo (with the accompanying expense of a digital cable package, CableCards, and of course the monthly Tivo service charge), or going with a Comcast or Verizon DVR. I don't think I would go down the MythTV route -- I actually have a full-time job and I don't need another one setting up and maintaining my DVR.

(Interestingly, after re-reading this posting I discovered that the option of just watching broadcast TV live instead of using a DVR hadn't occurred to me at all. The thought of live TV is so distasteful to me now that I think I would cut the cable altogether rather than go back to being force-fed content.)

Jim on 06.19.11 @ 06:08 PM ET [link]

Now you can dial!

(via BoingBoing). Here's an old Bell Telephone video from the time when dial telephones were just being introduced, showing new customers how to dial properly.