This morning I went for a bike ride along the Minuteman trail. My intent was to check out the part near me that I didn’t know existed, instead I would up going all the way to the end. A few miles in I came upon a girl who was going at my same pace, and I ended up following her all the way out to Bedford. I stopped for a drink of water and then turned around, only to find that she had just started back as well. The path was beautiful: amazing foliage and great weather and light traffic (at least at the beginning). I just sort of kept going, with the mysterious rider ahead of me urging me on, going the perfect speed, passing all the slow pokes and joggers and people with their kids, until a few miles from the end I stopped at Trader Joe’s for some groceries and she kept riding, disappearing into the distance.

The ride felt easy, but I guess by the end I was more tired than I realized, because a quarter mile from home I ran into a railing and fell over, which was pretty embarrassing, and then a few hours after I got back I fell asleep. Still, 20 miles and no aches or pains (besides where I hit the ground), so I guess I must be getting into better shape after all.

Photo by presta

Slashdot has an article on “when not to use chroot” which links to a KernelTrap discussion. The basic summary is, there is a UNIX command that lets you change the root (top level) directory to somewhere else, and it is effective for several sysadmin tasks, including “jailing” programs by making sure they can’t see anything other than the files necessary for them to run.

I’ve used chroots several times to fix systems with bad kernels. I’ve used chroots to compile Debian software. I’ve used them to bootstrap system installs. And I’ve used them, in fact continue to use them, even as we speak, for security. And I like to think that I’m not incompetent.

In any endeavor there are people with different levels of skill. I know that I’m not on top in terms of Linux expertise — there are people who were doing Linux before I even had a computer. But I do cringe when I see this sort of ridiculous blanket criticism of a commonly used implementation of a versatile tool. So Bill Joy invented chroots in the 70s because he was having problems with some compiler. Who cares. Today many important programs use or support chroots for improved security, and they do it because it works. So why the need to call people who use tools in effective ways idiots, just because they aren’t using something as it was originally intended?

That sounds like the sort of thing an Apple CEO should say, not an open-source kernel hacker. It’s sort of sad, really. Meanwhile, a have two dozen Apaches humming away, safely jailed in their own chroots, serving up web pages as they have been doing for the last year and a half.

It’s “in beta” but they’re offering high-quality 256kbps VBR MP3s, album artwork, and *no DRM*. They have a ton of music, most of it priced at $0.89 per track and $8.99 per album. They have a simple little downloader app that automatically adds the music to iTunes (or Windows Media Player). Since it is DRM free you can put it on any portable device or computer you’d like and even share songs with friends and family. Except for selection, Amazon’s new MP3 store is superior in every way to the iTunes Store.

I’ve been growing dissatisfied with the design of this blog for a while now, but was never able to come up with a new design that is both visually pleasing, more functional, and, most importantly, easy to implement.

A few weeks ago I came up with a design I’m really happy with. I designed it with the powerful and customizable K2 theme in mind, and am actually sorta surprised that I’ve been so successful in overlaying my design and functionality on top of that very powerful but visually restricted theme.

The new design is going to bring some important improvements: a wider page, larger, more readable text, and, my favorite, a much better way of posting and displaying links, quotations, pictures, and the like. I think that putting all the different types of content I like to post on an equal visual footing is going to be really useful. Unfortunately it means I need to go back through my voluminous archives and reformat a ton of posts to match the new way of doing things. Which is going to take some time.

Still, with any luck, I hope to have the new design up and running in the next week or so, even if some of the older entries aren’t going to display properly (at first). Stay tuned, its an exciting time. 🙂

In Jewish tradition, the apple is seen, not as a symbol of downfall, pain, and death, but of sweetness and love. Today is Rosh Hashanah, the head of the year, a day in which we reflect on why we are on this earth and how we live our lives. We dip the apple in honey to look forward to a sweet new year — a year that is satisfying and precious. In doing so, we participate in a custom dating back to at least the 7th century.

We hear the blow of the shofar on this day, and it cries to us to awaken from our moral slumber and look towards God, to reflect on the year gone by and our various failings, to look forward to the year ahead and our potential for greatness. Rosh Hashanah is about new beginnings, new opportunities to make a better world. It is also about beginning a period of reflection and spiritual cleansing leading up to the day-long fast of Yom Kippur, the day of atonement.

And why am I, an admitted atheist, so imperfectly explaining these traditions?

It is because Tuesday when I was down alone in a hot basement moving around equipment, all I could think about were the stories told at Michael and Sydney’s funeral a few weeks ago. And this morning, when I awoke with a start a few minutes before my alarm sounded and lay in bed getting my bearings, what went through my head were snippets of memory of my grandparents, Louise and Stan Dorn, the former of whom died a little ways back, the latter of whom took his own life just this week.

Continue reading “Apples dipped in honey”

In brief: I bought the iPhone. I had some major problems with porting my number from Sprint that was about 5% my fault (not knowing the right account info) and 95% AT&T’s fault (giving me bad info and screwing up the process, burning in my SIM card with the wrong number, etc.). I got incredibly frustrated and was ready to just call the whole thing off (and take the $40 iPhone restocking fee), but Sebastian suggested I call and complain to a manager. I called AT&T Customer Service, spoke to a “Customer Advocate,” and briefly explained my problem to him. He disagreed on a few points, but I explained how the information was conveyed to me was not the same as what he was telling me. He asked me what I wanted, I said my activation fee waived and a free month of service, and like that my problem was solved and my wishes made real. Not bad. For now, my anger with AT&T is smoldering. If the port goes through successfully and without too much hassle, it will be doused, and if I don’t have further problems, I might even be able to recommend AT&T to others! But we’ll take this one step at a time…

I’ve started counting every time in conversation or going about my life I say or think, “gee, it sure would be great to have an iPhone right now.” At dinner, when I wanted to look something up on Wikipedia. In the car, when I wanted to see movie showtimes. Two days ago when I was away from my computer but wondering if someone had emailed me yet. Waiting in line, wishing I had a fun game to occupy me. All those times it would be nice to have had my iPod, except that I don’t carry it everywhere I go.

Apple is a very secretive company, and that is their right. But it’s generally straightforward to predict what new functionality is coming to Macs (faster processors, more storage, neater displays, software updates, etc.) and it isn’t a deal breaker if something doesn’t make the cut. With their new phone product its not quite so easy — will the next model support stereo bluetooth for headphones? Will it have a GPS chip for mapping? Sure it will probably have more capacity, but will it have 3G? These things are actually fairly important, especially since it is not yet clear how hard (or expensive) it will be to upgrade to a new iPhone. For instance, if I give up my Palm Treo, I also give up its built in GPS, which is something I’ve grown to rely on while in the car. I give up its EV-DO high-speed internet, which isn’t a big deal, except for those few times when its really useful to have (long train rides, for example). I give up the ability to wirelessly sync over bluetooth, and to transfer files, which I do from time to time.

All of this stuff is fine, it would just be nice to have some idea, like with most other cell phone manufacturers, what features are here, what features are coming, and what the timeline is. Apple doesn’t seem willing to deliver that sort of thing. If they just said “we plan to allow more Bluetooth functionality in a software update,” that would almost be enough. If they said “we don’t plan to offer 3g for at least a year,” that would be enough. But they won’t. So like so many people, I sit here in limbo, trying to decide if the trade-offs are worth it, just waiting to be burned when a few months from now the things I would have been happy to wait for suddenly appear, and I’m stuck with a product that I’m not entirely satisfied with.

I was pretty ready, last night, to go out and get myself an iPhone, contract and all. Then I remembered about the lack of GPS, and that gave me pause. A $400 iPod is one thing. An $800 per year contract is a second. But then I’ve got to go out and buy an TomTom ONE as well? Sheesh.

Well, it is five week since I wrote “Tell everyone you know that you’ve quit,” in which I promised that by this time I would be ready to run a 5K race, having completed the Couch to 5K running program from CoolRunnings.com. I didn’t specify any sort of speed, just that I would have the endurance to run 5K (3.1 miles) without stopping. And with that caveat in place, I am reporting back on my progress.

I’m pleased to say that I accomplished that goal in week 7, and at that point I stopped the training. Granted, I’m not “pleased” that I stopped training, in fact I don’t have a good excuse for my lack of enthusiasm, except that I got sloppy and started going to bed late and waking up late and not having the time or energy for the runs. Last week while in California I ran twice on the treadmill and it felt good, and I need to do more of it, and I hope to, if I can just get back on Eastern time and start waking up early again. I need to continue to work on both endurance and speed, so that I can run a 5K consistently, thrice a week, and not just once in a while.

But that said, the program has helped me a lot. I can run for a good 15 or 20 minutes without really feeling tired, provided I keep it at a nice consistent pace. And that is a real improvement from where I was two and a half months ago. I think what I need to get to the next level is a new motivation, some sort of goal or a challenger or a running partner. Kelli suggests a 5K race at the end of October, which might be enough, provided a few other people choose to join in, but I dunno.

It is difficult to estimate the full impact of _High School Musical_ on the Walt Disney Company, but analysts say that the $4 million television movie produced for the Disney Channel in early 2006 has netted the conglomerate at least $500 million, and as much as $1 billion. It has been shown in over 100 countries, been seen by 170 million people, and has spawned a triple platinum album. There are concerts, a touring stage show, and, coming soon, High School Musical on Ice. There is a HSM parade at Disney California Adventure. Merchandise in every shape and size. And the rights have been licensed to 2,000 schools and local theater groups.

What did this simply plotted, pop song-studded, family-friendly movie get so right? It has been called the Grease for the modern pre-teen generation. And its enormous success caught even Disney by complete surprise, at first. But since HSM’s premiere, shares in the Walt Disney Company have risen by 50%. This week the sequel, _High School Musical 2_ broke records for basic cable with 17.2 million viewers for its first showing. And HSM 3 is already in pre-production, destined to hit the big screen (instead of the small) sometime in 2008 or 2009.

Continue reading “Long Games and Quick Gains: High School Musical and the Evolution of the Disney Channel”

Apparently everyone knows Ryan Seacrest now, thanks to _American Idol_ and other big things, but I still think of him as that DJ on Star back in the 90s. Which I only thought of because I’ve been listening to an old CD, It’s Star Music, with a song I love, “Insensitive” by Jann Arden. I like Star better than KROQ, which apparently employed Jimmy Kimmel for several years in the 90s as a sports guy. I imagine a lot of interesting and well-known personalities got their start in the LA radio scene. Maybe I just don’t know anything about Boston radio, but it doesn’t seem like there is the sort of huge music scene here that there is in LA, its more small venues and fewer big concerts and gatherings. Which seems odd. Or I could be completely out of touch, which is a better possibility. There is good music to be had here, I guess I just don’t see it being advertised. And of course I spend far less time in the car here, and when I am in the car I listen almost exclusively to NPR, and only hear music from my iPod. Which might explain why I don’t have any new music to enjoy. Hmm. Anyone know any good music?

I read (or had read to me, or listened to the tapes of) the first four Harry Potter books, and then I went to college, and that was that. Since then I’ve managed to thoroughly forget most of the important plot details and a lot more from the series.

Much like with cancelled television shows, I found myself with renewed interest in the Potter franchise once the series was “finished.” I picked up an inexpensive paperback box set of the first six books a few months ago and last month finally got down to business. Tonight I finished the second book, and was surprised and amazed at how much I had forgotten, including the major plot twists. Which made it a lot of fun, actually, to experience it all over again.

That someone has decided to pick up Harry Potter doesn’t make for much of a story, but my friends and colleagues with whom I have shared my adventure suggest that my secondary pursuit is a bit more unorthodox and even interesting to the general public. Which strikes me as a little odd, but okay.

The twist is that I’m watching the Harry Potter movies, as well. *Simultaneously*. Well, not exactly, as that would be tough, but for both books one and two I’ve found that by the time I’m about a quarter of the way through the book, I’ve gotten the itch to see how certain things are portrayed on screen. So I’ve watched the movies up until the point when they catch up to where I am in the book, at which point I pause and continue to read. As I expected but which others find amazing, where I stop ends up being almost precisely a quarter of the way through the film.

Continue reading “The Harry Potter Experience”

I did a *lot* of driving this weekend, and one thing that kept me awake on the long drive home tonight was a _This American Life_ episode from 1997 called “Dreamhouse.” The opening vignette was about city living in a packed high-rise. I still can’t imagine living like that, so little private space, streets that smell of sewage and garbage, the constant light and sound and bustle and sirens.

The main story was long and fascinating, narrated by documentary filmmaker Meema Spadola, whose defining childhood experience was her parents’ decision in 1976 to move the family from New York City to rural Maine, where they would build their own house — from scratch — while living in a tent. The great adventure was in many ways an unmitigated disaster, but it had a profound and lasting effect on Meema. As I often do in such situations, I began to wish again that I could have grown up in a more wild, natural place. It’s a very, very mild obsession of mine, these days, but an obsession none the less.

The final story in the show is an excerpt from David Beers’s memoir _Blue Sky Dream_. In his talk about moving out to a fresh Northern California suburban development in the 1950s and watching the land go from scrubland chaos to concrete order I found comfort and familiarity. I wasn’t there of course — I wasn’t alive — but it all feels true to me. Exploring the empty, cleared land with its yellow flags demarcating property boundaries and the future sites of trees and sewers and buried electrical lines. Wide paved roads, ever-present cul-de-sacs and sidewalks and green grass and pools. I know it all, I’ve seen it and felt it and wandered it, I love the order and the cleanliness and the tameness of it. I was born in a master-planned community that emerged from eradicated orange groves, and even in the 80s as I was growing up I could still see the march of human development as strawberry fields become shopping malls and parking lots, airports and baseball diamonds and roads. By my old house there is a remnant of what used to be, and it is amazing in its alienness, the dark ground and light brush and flies and lizards.

In my suburban safety I never had to worry about freezing through a snow storm in a house missing windows and walls, and for that, of course, I am grateful. I also never had to worry about getting lost in the woods, or stumbling across deer drinking from a pond, or waking up early to milk the cows, or getting splinters tapping the maple trees to collect their sap. But for missing those things I am not grateful.

I live in a world of order, and on weekends I venture forth, occasionally, into the chaos: I go hiking or kayaking or climbing. Its odd that exploring and enjoying the natural world, in this modern age, has become but an occasional weekend leisure activity for many, and a completely alien experience for many more.

And one final rambling thought: in California today perhaps the best way to experience the sight and smell of the orange groves of yore is, sadly, hilariously, ridiculously, through a Disney theme park ride.

Flickr long ago promised an easy option to get all of your photos out, no fuss. They never delivered. Since I use pretty much none of the Flickr community features and only use it for photo storage, and since I’m doing a fairly crappy job of taking new photos and uploading them, I’m not really sure I should be staying on Flickr. Maybe I should go back to a self-hosted solution, like Gallery or whatever the new version of iPhoto pops out.

On the other hand, I’m thinking of moving my blog over to blogs.law.harvard.edu because the server is snappy and well-maintained (by me, actually) whereas agblog is neither of those things. And of course WordPress makes it really easy to export your data and import it into another WordPress blog. I’d just lose my custom theme, which I’m not sure how much I care about anymore.

On the third front, I’m trying to get my spam under control and wondering what is the best thing to do with my email, knowing that IMAP is probably still it and Gmail is most decidedly not.

It’s my information, dammit! I want to outsource the management of it on a temporary basis, to make my life easier, but I want to maintain complete control over it. Mark Pilgrim is so right when he says:

Praising companies for providing APIs to get your own data out is like praising auto companies for not filling your airbags with gravel. I’m not saying data export isn’t important, it’s just aiming kinda low. You mean when I give you data, you’ll… give it back to me? People who think this is the pinnacle of freedom aren’t really worth listening to.

So what’s a guy to do? For goodness sake, I just replaced my Linux box with a dedicated NAS appliance, not because I don’t know how to maintain Linux boxes (give me a break), but because I do it all day and I just don’t want to have to do it at home as well. So what’s the best, easiest, most flexible, way to handle a blog, my email, and my photos in a way that I completely control but that I have to manage as little as possible?

I’m finding the first Harry Potter book utterly confusing, and not in the way one might expect. Harry has a “mum,” not a “mom,” which is properly British, but then he eats a bag of “chips,” which means french fries, which don’t normally come in bags — those are “crisps,” which means potato chips. Later he had a “pasty,” which is not something any American child would be allowed to eat (in Britain a turnover, in America stripper apparel), followed by an English muffin! A what? But in the next chapter, they’re saying “Merry” Christmas, which no Brit would say. And of course the most obvious change, taking the “philosopher’s stone” of the title, a legend that dates back to the 13th century, and swapping it for “sorcerer’s stone,” which means nothing, is just insulting.

It turns out that I’m late to this particular party: these very “translation problems” that so gall me were apparently discussed in a 2000 _New York Times_ op-ed, and in the later books Scholastic, the American publisher, made far fewer modifications. Very good indeed.

I’ve only found a few chances to play with my new camera flash (or “Speed Light,” in Nikon parlance) prior to the wedding this weekend, so I’m still getting the hang of it. I briefly scoped out the venue for last night’s dinner and it looked fine — low ceilings, which is really all I was looking for. I forgot to ask Igor to bring me my diffuser, which it turns out was a critical error. You see, to get good, soft light and avoid red eye, you want to bounce the flash off the ceiling. Which works well if the ceiling is low. The problem comes when your ceiling is chock full of chandelier crystal, and every time you flash it causes a thousand little light reflections on everything, like a disco ball. But if you do a non-bounce flash, the light is harsh and overpowering, and of course there is the red eye problem. And did I mention that all the walls were covered in big mirrors?

Bad venue for the inexperienced photographer! Having the diffuser, which softens and spreads the light, would probably have helped a lot. Today is outdoors, though, so perhaps I’ll do better. And of course there is the “official” wedding photog, so its not like I have to worry too much about missing the important moments.

I took 103 images last night. I’m happy with about a dozen of them. One of which is pictured here.

Well, that didn’t feel very good. I’ll go ahead and blame the 85 degree heat, and also that I played softball on Tuesday and did a bit too much sprinting and strained my feet and ankles. The whole run was painful, and on this, my first “long” run (20 minutes), I for the first time in my five weeks of training broke the routine. I stopped at about the 12 minute mark to stand under a tree for a minute and regroup before going on. Now I’m debating whether I should do the run again or just go on to the next week, which includes a 25 minute run.

!=/files/2007/08/5kfailure.gif(4K run graph)!

The red arrow indicates where I paused the iPod to take a break. Bad Danny, bad! Despite that, after the run my right foot was still throbbing…

It is apparently an essential part of, say, quitting smoking. You announce to the world that you’re doing it, then the world supports you or, at least, you’re encouraged to follow through with it because otherwise you’re gonna feel really stupid in front of the world.

So here goes, I’m going to run a 5K. It’s a simple goal, its not an incredibly difficult goal, it is a good first-step to getting healthier and getting back into doing regular physical activity and losing some weight.

And I have the advantage that I’m following the Couch to 5K Running Plan, which is a gradual 9 week program, and I’ve already completed week 4. Oh, and this guy called Robert Ullrey made a great podcast that makes it that much easier to follow the program.

Perhaps its the frantic pace of the last couple weeks, perhaps its the travel to Chicago, or the heat, or maybe its just knowing that week 5 is where things really start getting harder, but for some reason I’ve started doing what I’d managed to avoid for the entire last month: putting off my runs.

So here it is, world. I’m going to run a 5K. I’m going to be in shape to do it five weeks from today. Because I’m going to finish this damn program. And now that I’ve announced it to the world, my only goal is to avoid looking stupid. 🙂

I’m sitting here in Chicago’s Millennium Park listening to a free Leonard Bernstein concert. The venue is marvelous, the music is good, the weather is beautiful. And I’ve got Skype open and an audio call connected and I’m sharing the music I’m hearing in Chicago with Aaron in California using my cell phone’s EV-DO data plan over my Bluetooth connection. That’s pretty neat.

When the nice producer called me I was excited because I listen to NPR’s On the Media whenever I catch it, usually once or twice a month, and its the *perfect* show for a story about dcphonelist.com. Then she said something about a discussion and I got really confused about the format of the interview and asked her to explain the show and generally sounded like a dope. Then they pre-interviewed me and decided there wasn’t enough to the story (or I was too boring). Then today (after the article in _The Hill_ came out), they decided there was. Anyway, yeah, had an neat interview today at WBUR over ISDN to Bob Garfield at WNYC, and with any luck the segment will be interesting and I won’t sound like an idiot. Here’s hoping.

Edit: Here is the audio and transcript.

Rebecca MacKinnon blogs about a Global Voices regional editor who faces fines and jail time for posting a picture that the Hong Kong censorship board considers to be indecent. It is a strange story because it is intertwined closely with Yahoo’s recent decision to roll out content filtering on its Flickr service, and questions are raised about whether Flickr’s decision to mark the photograph as “mature” might have led to the legal justification for the charge.

I haven’t looked at Flickr lately, but when I went to check out the perfectly tame photostream in question, I was told that viewing it is outside of my “SafeSearch” level. I didn’t even know I had one. Clicking through anyway I see a picture of a lake followed by a picture of some houses, but up top is a banner that states, “If you’ve changed your mind about wanting to see this content, you can ESCAPE.” followed by a big blue button labeled “TAKE ME TO THE KITTENS!” Yeah, its cute and funny, I guess. Until arbitrary censorship and strange new account settings start contributing to people going to jail. Then its not so funny.