KPAO http://www.kpao.org/blog/ Philosophical musings from a geek-tech viewpoint in the heart of Silicon Valley en Copyright 2010 Wed, 01 Sep 2010 08:00:00 -0800 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/ http://www.rssboard.org/rss-specification Glenn Greenwald calls BS on "Nobody Could Have Known" This is a fantastic article on the recurring tactic for politicians and pundits to shirk responsibility for their past positions claiming "nobody could have known then that this would have happened". Actually, yes, anyone could have known, had they actually taken the time to study all of the information available without bias.

The predominant attribute of American elites is a refusal to take responsibility for any failures.  The favored tactic for accomplishing this evasion is the "nobody-could-have-known" excuse.  Each time something awful occurs -- the 9/11 attack, the Iraq War, the financial crisis, the breaking of levees in New Orleans, the general ineptitude and lawlessness of the Bush administration -- one is subjected to an endless stream of excuse-making from those responsible, insisting that there was no way they "could have known" what was to happen:  "I don't think anybody could have predicted that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile," Condoleezza Rice infamously said on May 16, 2002, despite multiple FBI and intelligence documents warning of exactly that.  One finds identical excuses for each contemporary American disaster.  Robert Gibbs just invoked the same false excuse:  that "nobody" knew the depth of the financial and unemployment crisis early last year.
And I love the Cheney video clip from 1994 explaining with specific details on why invading Iraq is a bad idea.

]]> http://www.kpao.org/blog/2010/09/glenn-greenwald-calls-bs-on-no.html http://www.kpao.org/blog/2010/09/glenn-greenwald-calls-bs-on-no.html politics Wed, 01 Sep 2010 08:00:00 -0800 Pretty Loaded: a gallery of Flash loading animations flash-loading-animation.pngThis is a nice, passive way to view a variety of creative ways to show progress when loading large flash files. I liked it so much, I installed the screensaver.

Pretty Loaded
]]> http://www.kpao.org/blog/2010/08/pretty-loaded-a-gallery-of-fla.html http://www.kpao.org/blog/2010/08/pretty-loaded-a-gallery-of-fla.html Tue, 31 Aug 2010 08:00:00 -0800 Send an SMS text message via email
All cell phone carriers have an email gateway that allows you to send an email to any phone number, and it will get converted into a text message. Here is a list of the email gateways for the major cell providers in the US.

Alltel1234567890@message.alltel.com
AT&T1234567890@txt.att.net
Boost1234567890@myboostmobile.com
Metro PCS1234567890@MyMetroPcs.com
Sprint1234567890@messaging.sprintpcs.com
T-Mobile1234567890@tmomail.net
Verizon1234567890@vtext.com
Virgin Mobile1234567890@vmobl.com
US Cellular1234567890@email.uscc.net

Just replace 1234567890 with the phone number you want to send the text message to.]]> http://www.kpao.org/blog/2010/08/send-an-sms-text-message-via-e.html http://www.kpao.org/blog/2010/08/send-an-sms-text-message-via-e.html utilities Sat, 28 Aug 2010 12:00:00 -0800 Song of the day: Space Doggity by Jonathan Coulton
The back story:
Song Fu Challenge #3 was to do an homage to David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” that hit the main plot points and referenced the original song subtly at least once. Yes you’re right, I almost went with the first monkey in space, but I didn’t want to be accused of going overboard with the monkeys. So I went with the first dog in space instead.
I love the Pink Floyd/Comfortably Numb homage in the guitar solo.



Now I’m floating free
And the moon’s with me
And it’s bright enough
To light the dark

And it’s so high up here
And the stars—so clear
Are they close enough?
Will they hear me bark from here?

Buy the song here.
]]> http://www.kpao.org/blog/2010/08/song-of-the-day-space-doggity.html http://www.kpao.org/blog/2010/08/song-of-the-day-space-doggity.html music Tue, 24 Aug 2010 10:00:00 -0800 Song of the day: New Mistake by Jellyfish

It's not exactly new, but it's a fantastic song. Don't much care for the "repeat and fade" ending, but it's still a 5-star song in my book.

Love is blind, deaf and dumb, but never mind
You better catch me when I fall
I'm on my roller skates
'Cause any ol' way that I fall
I land in your arms, even though it's wrong
'Cause I love my new mistake

]]> http://www.kpao.org/blog/2010/08/song-of-the-day-new-mistake-by.html http://www.kpao.org/blog/2010/08/song-of-the-day-new-mistake-by.html music Fri, 20 Aug 2010 10:00:00 -0800 Regarding the mosque / world trade center issue
There is already a mosque (aka masjid) within 2 blocks of the World Trade Center site in NYC. According to the Masjid Manhattan web site, it has been there since 1970. Source: Wonkette

The neighborhood surround the World Trade Center is hardly hallowed ground. It is home to a "Gentleman's Club" (sex), Off-Track Betting (gambling), as well as many fast food restaurants, (which have undoubtedly contributed many more American deaths than terrorists ever have, as one commenter wryly noted). Source: Daryl Lang

The bible has just as much incendiary language encouraging followers to wipe out heretics. For example:

If thou shalt hear say in one of thy cities “Let us go and serve other gods,” which ye have not known... Thou shalt surely smite the inhabitants of that city with the edge of the sword, destroying it utterly, and all that is therein, and the cattle thereof, with the edge of the sword. And thou shalt gather all the spoil of it into the midst of the street thereof, and shalt burn with fire the city, and all the spoil thereof every whit, for the Lord thy God: and it shall be an heap for ever; it shall not be built again. Deuteronomy 13

More on The American Muslim.

Can we now move back to discussing issues that matter a hell of a lot more to this country, like the economy, taxes, and the deficit?
]]> http://www.kpao.org/blog/2010/08/regarding-the-moque-world-trad.html http://www.kpao.org/blog/2010/08/regarding-the-moque-world-trad.html politics Wed, 18 Aug 2010 12:00:00 -0800 My styles for use with Stylish stylish.pngUgh. Caught a pretty bad cold on the trip out to Michigan to see my dad. I had to stay home from work today. Too sick to really concentrate on anything of import, but not sick enough to just stare at the walls. So I took the opportunity to convert most of my GreaseMonkey scripts over to Stylish.

If you're interested, here are my Stylish scripts. I'm most proud of the AllMusic clean up style; that one took a while to pull together. The RTM style took a bit of crafting as well. The others are generally just a few elements that have been hidden.

Web site owners, if I've created a style for your site, that's a good indication that you need to take a close look at the design goals and how well you are delivering value to your customers. There are a lot of bad sites out there that I merely tolerate. It takes a special sort of design for me to fire up the text editor and start poking around in Firebug.
]]> http://www.kpao.org/blog/2010/08/my-styles-for-use-with-stylish.html http://www.kpao.org/blog/2010/08/my-styles-for-use-with-stylish.html css Mon, 16 Aug 2010 20:00:00 -0800 Best of the worst of stock art
Here's a pretty good one (with associated soundtrack). But I'm sure you all can do better. Post a comment with a link to a truly awful stock photo and I'll buy it and put it up here.


Smoove-G-with-hot-pink-shades.jpg

]]> http://www.kpao.org/blog/2010/08/best-of-the-worst-of-stock-art.html http://www.kpao.org/blog/2010/08/best-of-the-worst-of-stock-art.html Wed, 11 Aug 2010 18:00:00 -0800 Windows Vista Home Premium Product Key WindowsVistaHomePremium_web.jpg
I bought a Dell Studio Hybrid many months ago to use as a Windows Media Center PC. It's hooked up to my HDTV, and we use to to record over-the-air HD, play back DVDs, and stream movies from Netflix.

I immediately  upgraded it to Windows7. Thus I had no need for the Windows Vista Home Premium license that came with it. I found the Certificate of Authority this past weekend as I was cleaning off my desk. Sadly the COA says I cannot sell it separately. So instead I've decided to give it away. Enjoy!

P3WXC-JD4K3-3BVWP-CCY73-WMDVW

windows-vista-home-premium-COA.jpg

]]> http://www.kpao.org/blog/2010/08/windows-vista-home-premium-product-key.html http://www.kpao.org/blog/2010/08/windows-vista-home-premium-product-key.html Windows microsoft Tue, 10 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0800 Stylish is better than GreaseMonkey for CSS tweaks previously posted about using GreaseMonkey to change the appearance of a web page. I got tired of watching my pages restyle every time I visit them. So I took  Avindra Goolcharan and tried out Stylish.

It really makes a huge difference that custom styles are applied before the page loads. It's a much more seamless experience

As a bonus, I find it easier to code and debug than GreaseMonkey.

Of course the downside is there's no way to re-format content on the page as one can using GreaseMonkey. While CSS does provide a lot of flexibility, you still cannot do a find/replace of content.

I spent the morning porting my AllMusic clean up script to Stylish. The only thing I miss is the title bar reformatting. So I kept that around as a separate GreaseMonkey script: AllMusic - clean up TITLE text.

AllMusic after medium.jpg

]]> http://www.kpao.org/blog/2010/08/stylish-better-than-greasemonkey-css.html http://www.kpao.org/blog/2010/08/stylish-better-than-greasemonkey-css.html css Sun, 08 Aug 2010 12:00:00 -0800 Home solar = no incentive to conserve electricity macro-power-meter.jpg2½ years ago we put solar panels on our roof. When I wrote about it at the time, I mentioned that while you can push power back into the grid when you're generating more power than you are consuming, you cannot be an energy producer. That is, you cannot generate more power than you consume. Well you can; it's just that you get no financial incentive to do so.

Sites like Microsoft Hohm are popping up to help home owners track their energy consumption and make their homes more efficient. The problem is, I have no incentive to do this anymore. Any gains I make will either need to be offset by additional energy use in my house somewhere else (I suppose we could finally put in A/C), or they will simple get absorbed by PG&E.

I suppose it's freeing in a way. This is one less thing I need to worry about around the house. I can focus on other home project like ripping out our non-native grass and plants and replacing it with native, drought-tolerant foliage. We could certainly use a reduction in our water bill.
]]> http://www.kpao.org/blog/2010/08/home-solar-no-incentive-to-con.html http://www.kpao.org/blog/2010/08/home-solar-no-incentive-to-con.html energy home solar water Tue, 03 Aug 2010 12:00:00 -0800 Delta's bad web site cost me 10,000 miles

fisheye-dog.jpg

fisheye-dog-pant.jpg

dog-on-back.jpg

I was booking a flight back home to Michigan to see my dad and his new puppy, Buck #2. Tickets are getting pretty expensive now that I'm in the 2 weeks before the trip window. So I thought I'd use miles to book a ticket.

I have to say I do generally like the tiered system for awards travel. 12,500 miles for the cheap seats (book >3 weeks in advance), 20,000 for mid-tier, and 30,000 for top tier. Even the mid-tier flights at this point were sub-optimal: red-eyes, long layovers (4+ hours) and crazy routing (SFO to DTW via JFK? WTF?!).


I finally found a not-so-sucky itinerary for 20k each leg. I had everything set and was ready to pull the trigger. I clicked on the select seats button, then accidentally hit the backspace key and that messed everything up. I got an error that told me to start over.

Annoying, but no biggie. I know what I want. I just need to go through the transactions. Only now, the outgoing leg cost 30k. Shit. The system screwed up, and while I'm trying to fix it, someone else snatches the last cheap fare out from under me.

Well, if I'm going to spend those miles, I might as well check out other options. So I got a non-stop flight for the 30k. It's pretty pricey for miles, but then again the dollar amount on this same itinerary is just shy of $1000. I also learned my lesson this time; I locked in the itinerary first, then went to select my seats.

And lo, there are two itineraries sitting in my profile. You guessed it: the original one where the system barfed and I got locked out somehow was saved as a hold in my account. And that's what caused the original leg to jump from 20k to 30k.

Why the heck can't the system be smart enough to throw up an alert when I start a new itinerary saying "Hey, don't forget you've got this other itinerary on hold over here." The sad thing is Delta was trying to do the right thing, but by doing it poorly, they screwed me over worse than if they hadn't saved it at all and the flights were released back into the pool.

I'm ending up getting 1.93¢ per mile, so it works out to be a pretty good deal. But still, come on Delta. This is not the way to endear yourself to your customers and foster a sense of customer loyalty.
]]> http://www.kpao.org/blog/2010/08/deltas-bad-web-site-cost-me-10.html http://www.kpao.org/blog/2010/08/deltas-bad-web-site-cost-me-10.html rant travel Sun, 01 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0800 You are not so smart (.com) you-are-not-so-smart.jpgThis is a fantastic blog on basic concepts in human psychology. I have gotten something out of every article I've read so far.]]> http://www.kpao.org/blog/2010/07/you-are-not-so-smart-com.html http://www.kpao.org/blog/2010/07/you-are-not-so-smart-com.html science Fri, 30 Jul 2010 20:00:00 -0800 Infectious song: Your Heart Is an Empty Room by Death Cab for Cutie And all you see
Is where else you could be
When you're at home
Out on the street
Are so many possibilities
To not be alone
]]> http://www.kpao.org/blog/2010/07/infectious-song-your-heart-is.html http://www.kpao.org/blog/2010/07/infectious-song-your-heart-is.html music Fri, 30 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0800 Tabberwocky trumps Tab Candy for Firefox tab management min-tab-width.png
I appreciate what Aza Raskin from the Mozilla Labs team is trying to do with Tab Candy. But the fact that it requires the user to actively manage the organization of tab groups immediately turns it into a 10% feature at best.

People are lazy. They don't want to manage meta-data. Hell, they don't even want to manage their regular data (e.g. finances) but reality is a forcing function. The stakes are higher.

What I like about Tabberwocky is it the simple approach helping you manage your tabs: it reduces the minimum width for tabs to prevent horizontal scrolling. I set my minimum to 54px, which is just enough to show the favicon. I can fit over 20 tabs on my screen this way. If I forget what a tab is, I can mouse over to see the tooltip, or just click it. Or use keyboard shortcuts like Cmd+1-9, or Cmd+Option+left/right.

Tab Candy adds another layer of hierarchy for me to manage, and that is one additional layer too many for me.

Update: You don't need Tabberwocky. Just go to about:config and type tabMinWidth in the search field. Set the value to 40.
]]> http://www.kpao.org/blog/2010/07/tabberwocky-trumps-tab-candy-f.html http://www.kpao.org/blog/2010/07/tabberwocky-trumps-tab-candy-f.html design firefox web Sun, 25 Jul 2010 22:00:00 -0800