Well, good thing that for $9 you can completely ignore that advice.

(This, obviously, is the gift to give folks who haven't figured out how to turn on the password keeper built into their browser, or learned how to create .txt files, or…)

My Dad had a Chrysler Newport back in the 70's that was guaranteed to break down on any trip over 60 miles. Later in life, my parents had an argument and bought me a Dodge Daytona that i regularly had to spend $200 a month to keep on the road. This was replaced by a Saturn SL1 where i discovered that non-dentable fiberglass side panels are nifty, except they do precious little to keep out the road noise (particularly when driving cross country).

i now drive a Nissan and a Subaru Outback (personal note, said Subaru was the first car that i actually bought for myself). i'm not looking back.

For what it's worth, being a true blooded American, i can only hope that the current trifecta of American Automotive Industry goes utterly bankrupt. i'm a big believer in The Market, (You know, the same The Market that was continuously informed would guide us unerringly to greater economic glory.) and having taken undergraduate Economics, i can say without prejudice that when said automakers are losing vast amounts of market share due to making crappy cars for the past four decades or so, that good Mr. Adam Smith had a the right idea about what should happen.

"But wait, what about the jobs/loss of industry/supply chain/children/leagues of private jet suppliers?" i hear you cry. "What of them?" i reply.

Seriously, Subaru, Nissan, Toyota, VW, BMW and other manufacturers have moved production into the US. With the loss of the big domestic auto makers, i'm betting they'll be more than happy to pick up the slack. Plus, unlike the previous companies, they're building new plants in the US, not Mexico. What's more, the big guys are doing just peachy overseas and all the way down the little dangly dirt bits that connect the northern and southern branches of America. Lest we forget that those huge conglomerates also ate up more than their fair share of smaller auto companies so it's not like we're about to forget how to build the damn things. We'll just see a lot of smaller operations vie for bigger business until they too are bought up by some large off-shore company like Ford or GM.

Seriously. Screw 'em. If you went to a store and everything you bought was broken, chipped or made with visible duct tape, would you keep shopping there? These things you're driving around aren't cheap, you know. Make them earn your money by giving you something that doesn't look like it came out of a Snap-Tite modeling kit. Will it be bad for the workers? Yeah, probably, but then they'll have to get jobs where health care isn't 100% paid for, they have to contribute to a 401k for their retirement and have their salaries increased based off of merit rather than tenure. (Hmm, sounds a bit like how my job is.)

As for the execs? Heh, yeah, like they're going to suffer.

i really don't care about J.J. Abrams. i didn't watch Cloverfield, never really got into Lost and honestly, he wrote Armageddon, you know the movie where Bruce Willis and some tough as nails oil wildcat guys goes up and blows up themselves some asteroid. i don't dislike him or anything, i just not awestruck by the man.

So i'm going into the whole "Hey, let's re-imagine the Original Series" fairly open minded. Why not? We need more space cowboys.

Sadly, then i watched the latest trailer.

Ok, so let's skip the whole first "Red Barchetta"/"Thelma and Louise" bit about getting pulled over by by C-3P-Paunch or the oddly Tom Cruise/"Top Gun" space motorcycley bit (we know it's a space motorcycle, and not a modified honda because it sounds like George Jetson's car.)

and instead turn our attention to the interior of the ship.

This is what happens when you let Apple design your spaceships (or there's a really good sale at the Hollywood IKEA. Personally, i'd add a disco ball and some bean bag chairs.

Know why those old 1920's Flash Gordon sets were so glossy and shiny? Because they were shot with stuff they stole from "exotic" Buzby Berkley movies. Here? i'm not so sure. "Welcome aboard the Enterprise Cadet! Here's your bottle of Mop'n'Glo! Get busy!" (Glad none of those folks are running in socks.)

And seriously? What the hell is the deal with the constant lens flares?

Lens Flare: It's the new cowbell.

There are other choices in Adobe After-effects, people.

Will the movie suck? Dunno. i can merely remind you all of what happened the last time we had a movie with lots of chrome, shiny surfaces, and gratuitous motorcycles:

Needless to say, i'm thinking about adding it to my queue, maybe late, next year sometime.

i need to remember to bring my camera with me more often…

The documentation discusses, in great detail, a lot of small bits that show how wonderfully flexible and dynamic it is, but don't really help. (Seriously, if i said "consumer key" and "access token", which do you think would be the one to use for normal calls?) Heck, when i read that Kent Brewster (tiny god of javascript) was getting frustrated trying to figure out how the hell OAuth worked, i knew there was a problem.

So, i'm deciding to do something about it.

i'm in the process of writing up a OAuthSimple set of libraries, one for various languages. Each will have the same sort of behavior, have the same methods, use the same arguments and return the same sort of structure. i will conform as close as possible to the host language, but stay true to the goal of "be simple".

i've got the Javascript library written already and am having folks poke at it and give me feedback, but in short, here's all the code you'd need to write in order to create a valid, signed OAuth request in Javascript:

<script type="application/javascript" src="OAuthSimple.js"></script>
<script type="application/javascript">

var oauthObject = OAuthSimple().sign({path:'http://example.com/rest/',
        parameters: 'boo=bar&boo=foo&term=rat&gorp=banana',
        signatures:{consumer_key:'12345abcd', shared_secret:'xyz-5309'});
document.getElementById('someLink').href=oauthObject.signedUrl;
</script>

You can actually use either "consumer_key" or "api_key" since i've seen both used.

i set a lot of default values that you can easily override. i also return a structure of useful crap:

header

"OAuth oauth_nonce="G02pf" oauth_timestamp="1226636468" oauth_signature_method="HMAC-SHA1" oauth_consumer_key="12345abcd" oauth_signature="2uV1UFQZhbJSQ8GfNkFmLO9pYSo%3D" "

parameters

Object {boo: [bar,foo],
   gorp:"banana",
   oauth_consumer_key:"12345abcd",
   oauth_nonce:"G02pf",
   oauth_signature:"2uV1UFQZhbJSQ8GfNkFmLO9pYSo=",
   oauth_signature_method:"HMAC-SHA1",
   oauth_timestamp:"1226636468",
   term:"rat" }

signature

"2uV1UFQZhbJSQ8GfNkFmLO9pYSo%3D"

signed_url:

"http://api.netflix.com/catalog/titles?boo=bar&boo=foo&gorp=banana&oauth_consumer_key=12345abcd&oauth_nonce=G02pf&oauth_signature=2uV1UFQZhbJSQ8GfNkFmLO9pYSo%3D&oauth_signature_method=HMAC-SHA1&oauth_timestamp=1226636468&term=rat"

that header bit? That's what you could use for a "Authorization:" header content.

You think that's easy enough for folks to figure out?

i'm still dorking with bits to make sure they work right, thus why i'm not pointing at the code quite yet. Ping me if you're interested in helping me debug it or if you've got strong opinions about how i should do this.

Let me start by saying that i have a possibly unnatural love of Mediterranean food (mostly northern, but there are dishes from nearly every country that are just darn tasty), in particular, i love Good Greek.

Good Greek is amazingly hard to find, and is not really native to the South Bay. There are places that serve "greek-like" food, but finding Good Greek was a challenge.

For a few years, there was a place in Burlingame (not far from where i lived at the time) called Yanni's that provided Good Greek food. Sadly, it closed. Then burned down. Effectively eliminating any chance of ever reopening. For many years i had to settle for sliced greek sausage masquerading as gyros and lumps of bland, grilled chicken served on wet pitas. All was not well as my dreams turned to roasted bits of beast seasoned with just the right amounts of oregano, parsley, garlic and brushed with first pressed olive oil. Chefs that knew there were different ways to serve feta based on how old it was. That hummus takes more than chickpeas, sesame seeds, and a blender.

It was lean times for my inner greek.

Until this year. Now, i not only have one, i have three Good Greek restaurants to pick from. The Greek Kitchen for greek on the go, Athena Grill for avgolemono, lamb souvlaki and the kind of mousaka that fills you up for a few days, and Opa, the newest addition to the list with killer gyros and fries.

Ah. Life is good. Particularly when served with tzatziki sauce.

Now, if only i could find a good cuban joint in the south bay…

There are some jobs that you simply go get a pro to do. Someone who not only has the expertise, but has something else: Pride in what they do.

i'm a big believer in pride. Not the false sort that generally leads before the fall, but the kind of pride you have in a job well done. i try to approach most of the things i do with that same sort of goal (although from the various spelling mistakes i've seen here, you'd be hard pressed to believe it), and i appreciate finding others who share that mindset. i try to do stuff i can feel pride about even when i'm doing crap busy work, possibly as the only form of solace i can find.

Still, i'm astounded by how few that number seems to be.

It's not an age, race or culture thing because i've found folks pretty much everywhere that don't give a damn about what they're doing and could care less if it falls over at the first opportunity. Honestly, it kinda goes beyond being just lazy or incompetent, because even if you job is shoveling elephant dung, pure repetition and the desire not to have more poo the next day are going to make you do a good job. Not taking pride is honestly more work than doing it right.

i guess seeing folks who don't take pride in what they do always makes me a little sad. They're just kinda wasting whatever effort they are putting in.

Considering my somewhat unholy attraction to things requiring batteries and potentially vibrate, (Wait, no, that doesn't sound right, the stuff i like isn't dishwasher safe either.) this means the occasional foray into various electronics marketers for things that go beep in the night. Today was such a day. Mind you, it wasn't really supposed to be.

Originally, i wanted to get a DVI cable, so i headed over to the local Office.* to see if they had one. They did. It cost $70 so i decided not to spend money on that there when i can get the same cable for $12 if i'm feeling particularly extravagant. Whilst looking for said cable, however, i spotted an Acer One all set up and cheerily displaying the fact that "JP wuz Here" in rotating 3d taggable glory.

It was wee. A tiny little computer about the size of a large-format paperback. The keyboard was actually usable and the screen was sharp enough to deal with. There were three USB ports on it for charging up stuff, and at 2lbs it'd be far lighter than what i'm currently lugging about. Plus the price was pretty good.

Still, that's when sanity hit.

Thing is, i don't need another computer. i've got three already (main, laptop, server), and it was really too big to stuff into a pocket and wander about.

Which, of course, will inevitably lead to one person remarking that if i wanted to get something small and capable, i should get an iPhone/iTouch. Up until yesterday, i'd probably agree. Yesterday, however, i discovered that Apple's latest art project doesn't allow you to write to the device when it's hooked up via a USB connection. So, aside from the fact that it doesn't have any way to expand from what you bought, doesn't have a replaceable battery, and doesn't let you write to the device other than via approved mechanisms plus the fact that it runs on the crushed dreams of orphaned puppies and kittens, i'm not going to be slapping down for one anytime soon regardless of whether or not it grants the power of flight and cures world hunger for $.99 a month. i could almost accept that i had to use iTunes to put music on it because i figured that would be a reasonably rare event. The fact that i have to use a specific program to do anything with the beastie pretty much confirms that Apple is marching solidly back to the heady days of 1998. (What, did they steal a playbook from Sony or something?)

Thus the reason that lugging around a 2lb mini computer actually appealed to me. At least with THAT i could use it like i'd expect to be able to. (For what it's worth, no, i'm not going to get the Acer.)

Oh well, winter's settling in and it's become jacket weather. At least i'll have more pockets for my phone, MP3 player and media/browser device.

Still wish someone sold one that made sense.

i haven't completely regretted that decision, but it's come close a few times.

First off, let me note that KDE4 is not ready for mass consumption, regardless of what the advocates say. If it were, i'd be able to find out how to use javascript to make widgets instead of finding this page. There's also lots of other design considerations that absolutely break the way that you have been using your desktop for the past 15 or so years. (No, really, steering with your feet and controlling the speed of the car with a wheel is far more efficient than what you've been doing before.) So here's what i've done and discovered to get the "Pretty" the hell out of the way and let me work.

1) Killing Kick-off
Do you focus on 1% of your field of vision? Do you crave little voyages of discovery? Well, then kick-off is for YOU! Taking a rather poor page from Vista and OSX, Kickoff presents an edited list of applications for you to choose from because we all only use two or three apps and remember where we put things months ago, right? Right click on the CircleK and pick "Switch to Traditional Style" to get back your muscle memories. One thing to note: That menu is the "Application Launcher Menu" widget. You'll need to know that when it disappears on you after KDE crashes.

2) You're Cleaned Desktop
KDE4 was designed by a neat freak. Someone who apparently doesn't own a physical desk and instead does all of his work in a sterile environment reminiscent of scenes from THX-1138. My desk is full of crap. It's loaded with stuff i use on a frequent basis like my phone, pens, documents, etc. Generally it's the stuff i need to do work. Likewise my virtual desktop is similarly cluttered with quick tools i need. i don't have to go dig for Firefox or Thunderbird or that PDF of API calls, they're right there on the desktop. Silly me.
KDE4 takes a firehose to such concepts and instead tosses all your "desktop" stuff into a translucent panel called "Desktop". Yay you. The good news is that you can drag application links back onto your virtual desktop and rebuild some of your life. Can't do that for documents or folders, sadly. Oh, and don't delete the original ".desktop" shortcut file since that's still used. You also might want to move the auto-download location for Mozilla since apparently efficiency is not clean.

3) Menubar mucking
See that little mini plasma icon on the right hand side of the menu bar? No, that's not for widgets like it's larger, immobile cousin lurking far above it, that button allows you to move and modify the bottom toolbar. Sadly, no way to make it transparent like in KDE4, so pick a theme you feel comfortable with.
The gray arrow is offset, the blue is suggested length (not always followed) and the green arrow, she does nothing.

Things i've yet to figure out how to fix:

1. You can't edit/remove "Favorites", but don't worry, they're not you're favorites.
2. i can't get KDE4 to recognize Pidgin as a valid default IM application (although it does let me specify thunderbird at least)
3. You can no longer display applications only on one desktop. The taskbar displays applications regardless of which desktop they've been assigned to. So much for keeping discrete sessions discrete.
4. Hot Plug USB connections no longer appear on the desktop. They appear in a widget window now. Neatness counts (apparently more than tradition or efficiency, but that's beside the point.)
5. i'm regularly able to crash KDE4 by opening the twitter widget. Since i'm not a huge fan of "widgets" vs "real apps that do things and not crash your window system" It's not a show stopper.

More info as it may or may not materialize.