Blog: 2006-11

Annie Leibovitz and Susan Sontag on Portland

Leibovitz: [...] It was actually Susan that said, "You must go to Portland! You must go to Powell's!" Literally, she said that. I was just visiting three cities or something, but she said I had to go. And it's not a problem because I love Portland.

—http://www.powells.com/authors/leibovitz.html

Contacts Databases and Ephemerality of Relationships

The personal contacts database that's been integrated with my email client for the last decade had around 3500 entries.

Years ago, I'd tagged some of these entries as especially relevant and therefore worth exporting to the small memory of the Palm Pilot PDA, using bbdbpalm.el.

Reviewing the tagged entries now, I realize I've spoken with almost none of those people since writing bbdbpalm.el in 1999.

I don't see any low-hanging profundity here; just struck by the observation.

(As an HCI aside: Notice in the Palm simulator screenshot on the bbdbpalm.el Web page that Palm OS 1.0 shows much more contact information in a screen than the Nokia E61 does, in a much more sensible and readable format, and using only one-third the number of pixels. This is one bullet point in the treatise I'm mentally composing on the UI shortcomings of the Nokia E61 and its Symbian S60 software.)

City of Cambridge GIS Viewer, and Maps on Nokia E61

The City of Cambridge (Massachusetts, USA) has an online GIS map viewer, which works with IE and mostly works with Firefox. It's pretty crude in some ways, yet can do some things Google Maps cannot.

I want to hack up a map viewer app for my Nokia E61 that use a local copy of Cambridge's GIS data. (All my earlier hacking energy for that project was expended trying to get one of the Nokia development tools for Symbian or Java to run on anything other than Microsoft Windows.)

I have the Google Maps client on my E61, but rarely have data connectivity when I actually need a map, and the Google Maps client doesn't seem to have any facility for disconnected operation.

Presently, I get maps on E61 by browsing Google Maps in Firefox on my laptop and transferring a screenshot as a PNG file to the E61.

Tattoos and Boston Skyline Photos

Yesterday, someone asked for permission to use one of my photos they found through Google as the model for a tattoo. I said yes, and s/he promised to send me a photo of the result.

The funny part is that they weren't interested in an edgy portrait or conceptual image, but one of my infamous point&shoot Boston skyline shots. The one blogged on 2006-02-09 or 2002-04-05, we determined.

I've gotten more mileage out of those-- they, and a Hancock Tower point&shoot shots, constitute the majority of my sales/uses.

The novelty of the skylines having worn off, I've not bothered to blog the better postcard shots taken with my real camera gear. I've moved more towards photojournalism and portraiture. Though I just might go on a regional stock photo binge in the spring.

Anti-Gay-Marriage Rally, Voting Rights, and Horses

I shot the anti-gay-marriage rally and counter-protest in front of the Massachusetts State House last Sunday. I'll have more to say about that once I find time to play photo editor. For now, I just wanted to share a shot I took for the humor value: police horses vote too.

IBM ThinkPad Survives Again

I just accidentally dropped my IBM ThinkPad X20 from a height of about 5 feet. It bounced across the floor and separated into a few pieces.

The ThinkPad appeared dead, and I figured it was a complete loss. But the LCD was still hanging on by threads, so I plugged it in, powered it on, and... it appears to be otherwise fine. I'm typing on it right now.

This is especially fortunate, as a photo shoot from late yesterday was on the laptop and had not yet been uploaded to a server.

Would another make of laptop have also survived these incidents? A few others might've, but (excepting a ruggedized unit), had a non-ThinkPad failed the drop test, I would've asked myself whether springing the extra dollars for a ThinkPad would've made the difference.

—2006-10-06

I just ordered some replacement hinge covers on eBay, and will be ordering a newer ThinkPad X-series or T-series this week.

First Magazine "Cover"

I just got the check to use one of my photos as part of the cover of a certain magazine annual issue.

It funded my new muslin backdrop.

Now that I'm getting into portraiture, I've set my sights on Vanity Fair. Oh, and I should pick up a National Geographic cover or two.

bbdbpalm.el 0.3

I've released version 0.3 of bbdbpalm.el, which exports contact information from Emacs BBDB to the Palm PDA.

Note that I announced several years ago that I no longer have access to a Palm and am not maintaining bbdbpalm.el. But Christoph Conrad sent a small patch all the way from Germany, to make bbdbpalm.el work with newer versions of BBDB, so I figured a new version couldn't hurt.

Quack 0.29

I've released version 0.29 of Quack, an Emacs add-on for Scheme software development. This version fixes a bug reported by Eric Hanchrow.

Yay

I think a lot of people who were burnt out on national and world politics since 2000 -- and simply incredulous at the mass of Bush voters in 2004 -- have been renewed by the Dems retaking Congress.

Which is good, because we as a country sure do have a lot of damage to undo.

neilvandyke.action Privoxy Rules on Nokia Internet Tablet

Just an ACK. A while ago, Kimmo Jaskari added discussion of my Privoxy actions file to the Privoxy Wiki page for the Nokia Internet Tablet.

My Privoxy Rules on No Longer Block .info

The latest version of my Privoxy actions file no longer blocks .info, since there's too many legitimate domains using it now.

Email Backlog

As of this morning, my email inbox backlog is down to only 24 messages. If you just heard from me after not hearing for a week or two, the inbox blitz is why. If you haven't yet heard from me, it's probably because your email requires relatively more thought or work before I can respond.

MidpSSH VT320 Terminal Emulation and GNU/Linux

MidpSSH 1.4.20 identifies as terminal type vt320, but it mishandles some control sequences that Emacs running under GNU/Linux sends, corrupting the display. (I think it might be misparsing some SGR sequences, or parsing them but assuming they advance the cursor when they do not. I haven't debugged.)

The workaround is to have MidpSSH be a little less precocious with respect to terminal emulation, and choose the relatively humble VT102. From the MidpSSH menu, choose "Settings > Network > Terminal Type" and enter vt102.

Note that the VT102 command set is a big win over VT100 on slow links, as it gives features like insert-line and delete-line, which can be hundreds of times faster than resending half a screen.

Nokia E61 Clear Plastic Shell Review and Loose Menu Button

I wanted to protect the LCD of my Nokia E61 from scratches and crushing, and also wanted to add a little protection of the E61's buttons and joystick when dropped into my pocket.

I couldn't find a satisfactory case or holster, so I bought a clear plastic "hard case" shell for the Nokia E61 from eBay seller ebuy-paradise for about $6 shipped. It arrived in slightly over a week.

In general, it's just the thing I needed. Only drawbacks are that it adds some bulk and weight, increases glare, makes some buttons harder to push, and in some light you can see an oil slick pattern in the plastic covering the LCD.

This particular design of shell doesn't fasten at the upper-right corner of the device, leaving a shoddy gap (see photo). I've since seen photos on the Web of another design clear plastic shell for the E61 that does have a fastener in that corner.

There's a chance that the shell has caused or contributed to the right menu button of my E61 becoming loose a week after installing the shell. However, I don't believe that the shell is responsible for damage to the button (and indeed the shell protects the button), so I'm inclined to attribute the cause to manufacturing defect. I've ordered a replacement keypad part in case the the button's performance continues to degrade.

MidpSSH 1.4.20 on Nokia E61 Cannot Connect on Port 443

On my Nokia E61, I've been doing SSH remote logins to my servers using PuTTY for Symbian. Since that's not the end-all-be-all of SSH clients, and when you need remote SSH access from your phone is likely when you're least able to deal with glitches, I wanted to also have a working MidpSSH on the E61.

One of the servers I administer runs an SSH daemon on port 443 rather than port 22, both to hide it from the SSH dictionary attack bots and to hopefully be accessible through links that block non-HTTP/HTTPS ports. Trying to connect to port 443 from MidpSSH 1.4.20 on the E61 generated a java.lang.SecurityException. A forum thread on xk72.com suggests that the firmware is intentionally preventing Java midlets from opening sockets on ports like 80 and 443.

So, I had that server's SSHD listen on port 444 in addition to 443, for situations in which I need to use MidpSSH (and have a link that permits port 444).

Incidentally, MidpSSH has several advantages over PuTTY, including session list preferences, easier sending of characters like Esc and Tab, and an 80-column mode on the E61.

Early Calling of Elections and Bad Dates

As I write this, CNN is calling key elections overwhelmingly in favor of the Democrats.

I'm reminded of the 2004 elections, when I went to a returns-watching party with a woman I was dating. News outlets began calling the race for Kerry. The woman's uncle was Washington editor for one of the big-name papers. When phoned, he said people there were already celebrating.

Then the reported numbers began tilting towards Bush.

Worst date ever. :)

Vote on Tuesday

I strongly recommend voting a straight Democratic ticket this time -- both to immediately curtail the ballooning GOP power, as well as to send a message to the GOP and its base.

Massachusetts voters: don't know where to vote? wheredoivotema.com

E.O. Wilson Book Talk in Harvard Square

Harvard Book Store is pleased to announce that on Monday, November 6th E.O. Wilson will discuss his new book The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth

—http://www.harvard.com/events/press_release.php?id=1728

You'll want to buy tickets in advance, in case the event is sold out. Richard Dawkins's "The God Delusion" author talk the other week (in the First Parish Church, incongruously or not) was sold out, but I'd scored tickets. Likewise with the Salman Rushdie talk, which was wonderful.