Reading between the lines of the FAQ on the site of HomeAgain, the company that supplied the RFID microchip implanted between Oscar’s shoulders, I am led to believe that the US took a market approach, as is typical here, with two incompatible pet identification chip systems, and eventually developed “universal” scanners after several years of fighting. The *rest of the world*, in contrast, got a later start but standardized from the get-go on an International Standards Organization specification for all chips. And of course the universal ISO chip, used in a bunch of countries, is not compatible with the AVID and HomeAgain chips used in the US and Canada, and of course our scanners, even the newest ones, can’t reliably read the ISO chips.

It’s the same story over and over again. Electricity, TV broadcast, cell phone systems, and on and on.

Four months into my job at Berkman, with people still nagging me about what, exactly, my work entailed, I wrote about what I do all day, in abstract terms.

You can’t expect to find your dream job in your first try, and I really didn’t expect, by the end of the search, to find anything remotely close. That I ended up where I am in a job I enjoy is a gift. I don’t plan to be here for the rest of my life, but I do plan to be here for at least a few years, and I’m pretty darn happy with how everything has turned out so far.

The post also gives a good explanation of why I have chosen to move on from Berkman and dive into the next challenge.

Here. Ignore their ugly-ass logo. Excited and sad. No idea what their policy is on blogging, or really anything else. It’s a new adventure, to be sure. But one that I’m ready for at this point in my life.

Perhaps later, the whys and wherefores that got me here. Or perhaps never, as growing older means learning what sorts of things you should write about and what sorts of things you shouldn’t.

My last day at Berkman is the 20th of February, I’ll be in CA the 21st to the 26th, if there is anyone around who wants to say ‘ello, go to Disneyland, that sort of thing.

In other news, I finally got Hey Mr. Producer on DVD, and its awesome.

I was just looking back at some hilarious December 2001 – January 2002 posts here, and its lot of fun to see what I was doing and thinking back then. Sorta makes me want to start writing more of those diary-like posts, the sorts of thing I’ve done less frequently since entering the working world.

But hmm, what to write. It’s a little harder to do this sort of thing when you’re employed, when your friends are out of college and more cognizant of the lasting effects of internet notoriety, when your coworkers and others might read what you write, when people might misinterpret and misconstrue with actual consequences, and when you’re busy on a big project.

Aha! The project! I’ll spare you the details, but suffice to say that my dreams for a new Berkman web site are finally coming to fruition. I have a deliverable scheduled for end of day Monday that is huge and looming. I’m pretty proud of the site in concept, although the execution is closer to 60% of what I want. However, in the last week or so I’ve learned a ton more about Drupal and how to harness it to do crazy things.

I’ve basically been re-implementing in a few days a site that took several weeks to build out the first time through. My way is cleaner and more flexible and easier to manage, but its still a big hassle to get everything working right. That said, doing it this way is *far* more fun, and thus I find that I can spend nearly every waking moment working on it and still be excited, vs before when I was unconsciously doing everything I could to avoid working on it, hating the ugly spaghetti code and silly architectural choices that I had to deal with.

This site is interesting because it is an attempt to organize 10 years of information using a relationship system I designed that lets you drop in content and relate it to various other bits of content (John Palfrey is the author of the paper, the paper was released at the Beyond Broadcast conference), and then various side blocks and bottom bits and list views are dynamically generated and updated bidirectionally. The disappointment and 60% functionality figure is because our contractor was not able to deliver the relationships functionality as specced, and in the interest of a timely launch the choice was made to give up a lot of that functionality and try to implement it later (which in truth I find unlikely to ever occur).

Despite this major setback, a lot of what I envisioned is going to be in there, at least in some form, and my design made it through the process relatively unscathed. And with several thousand pages of content, this is the largest site I’ve ever designed and implemented.

I promised to deliver by Tuesday because that was the third or fourth unrealistic deadline that had been set, but more so because I want this project finished, wrapped up, launched, and off my plate. When it is done and delivered, I will feel like I’ve fulfilled all of my big obligations to the Berkman Center and will be hitting a high note. A clean and comfortable place to set a break point and start thinking about what my next steps are, personally and professionally. In truth the thinking is already there, its just not concluded. I have a general direction, though, and every day that I come in to work at Berkman I get a little more sad that it is one day closer to my last.

One undersea cable cut by a wayward boat anchor? Coincidence. It happens from time to time, maybe once a year. Two? Surprising. But three? Let’s put on our conspiracy hats!

Assuming news reports are accurate, three cables were cut in quick succession, supposedly by boat anchors in stormy weather. These cables are geographically diverse but all serve the same region.

Now, for some time there has been a strong and persistent rumor that the United States has the ability to tap undersea fiber-optic cables. This is, itself, a remarkable feat, an incredibly complex and delicate job, especially to do it undetected. So let’s say someone else wanted to get into the game. Maybe a major regional player. And let’s say they were a bit over-ambitious, or some wires got crossed somewhere…knocking out three cables is a pretty bone-headed move. But it is certainly a lot easier to tap a cable while it is out of commission than while it is active.

On the other hand, maybe its not someone trying to *tap* the cable, but simply a group that wants to see what happens when a cable is maliciously *cut*. Much like satellites and radio spectrum, fiber communication infrastructure is pretty much impossible to protect against a determined attacker with a destructive aim. But unlike satellite and radio jamming, cutting a fiber is a lot easier to do undetected, since all you need is the undersea equivalent of a big pair of scissors (mounted on an ROV) and a map.

I’ve never seen this show before. I just watched the last episode of season 12 on the YouTubes. It was great. It looked like a really fun show, running around the world doing various strange tasks, being exhausted beyond measure, competing in actual challenges rather than sitting around on an island or in a house bickering all the time. There is some strategy involved, now that there have been 12 seasons and you have a fairly good idea of the sorts of stunts they are going to pull, and often you can figure things out by just taking a second to think before acting rather than rushing in screaming. I really want to get on this show!

Much of what made it seem so neat was the winners, Rachel and TK, who I knew within the first five minutes were the people I wanted to see come out on top. They were just so…happy. They were totally in the game as a game, loving every minute of it, be it climbing a glacier or flying in a helicopter or riding in a speedboat or even digging through crabs to find a clue. The other two teams were serious and angry and conflict-prone and making mistakes. Those two were just so exhilarated and happy to be there and in love, it was infectious.

For years now I’ve been signing my email messages (on and off) using the OpenPGP standard. That means that recipients can verify my identity and that the message was not altered in transit. In all that time, I know of only 3 or 4 people who ever did that. The sad reality is that you have to install an OpenPGP plugin for your mail client, and no one wants to do that.

Starting today I’ve switched to signing all of my emails using something called an S/MIME certificate. It is similar to PGP in that it allows the recipient to verify my identity and the validity of the message, but it works better in most circumstances because S/MIME support is built into almost all modern email clients.

There are several technical reasons why PGP is generally a better idea than S/MIME. I won’t list them here for the benefit of my non-technical audience. I will say that all of my emails now contain the following text:

I digitally sign my email messages for security and identity verification.
More information: /email-security.html

So if you want more info, that’s the place to go!