An all too oft recurring theme for me seems to be that of being late. So it is with that comment that I bring you a picture taken almost a month ago now.
I took this picture of the Brooklyn, WI fireworks from our living room 
I didn’t decide to take any pictures until the display was almost over, next year I’ll do better. Maybe. If I remember.
As the idea of an Android phone has been hanging out in my hindbrain, it has been bumping into other ideas that tend to hang out there. Things like going paperless, ubiquitous capture, OCR, FOSS, NAS, backups…
So begins a bit of almost stream of consciousness writing on things that are rubbing elbows in the back room of my mind while I am trying to be productive or sleep or do anything else for that matter…
I know, buzzword bingo, but hey, its stuff that is stuck in my brain. Lots of little “one day I’ll…” projects and schemes.
Things that I would like to have documented, but don’t. Things that I would love to use, but I am scared about getting locked into yet another proprietary system. I keep reading and hearing about Evernote… it sounds like a good idea. Especially if I had a smartphone to use with it. But then I get worried about “What if they go away” or as has happened with Facebook, what if they change the terms of use in such a way that not only doesn’t appeal to me anymore, it actively repels me?
I need to have a way to backup information that I trust to someone else to store and keep for me. I’m paranoid. I don’t like using a hosted email like Gmail. I like the interface for gmail, and if I could use it on my own hosted server, I would, in a heartbeat. But I start to get the shakes when I think about trusting someone else with my email or website.
My current offsite backup target is a linux box in my parents basement for crying out loud. My laptop gets backed up to TimeMachine and also using Carbon Copy Cloner and to that linux box in the basement.
I keep coming back to the idea that I want to use FOSS, because I like FOSS, because I want to support it. Because for the most part, FOSS has never let me down, at least not long term. (Yes I can feel the irony of that statement as I write this on my MacBook using MarsEdit.)
I did some poking around today looking for “whitebox” laptops, not that I can justify replacing the macbook any time soon, but just to keep an eye on what is available and what is “coming soon”.
I have also been kicking around the idea of swapping he hdd in the macbook for a new one, and just installing Ubuntu on it. See how well that works. One of the possible issues that comes to mind almost immediately is that of my audible.com account. Is there a linux solution for that, without getting an Android phone?
And since I am back to the phone thing again… is there a way to get an Android without a stupidly high cell phone bill each month? I know I am kind of spoiled by my current $10/month TracFone, but still! I don’t want to shell out $60+/month for a phone plan. Especially for something that I may actually hate. Or just not really want to use, so it sits on a shelf at the house instead of being used.
Ok, enough of that for now, I think I have some other stuff I should be doing right now… ok, I am sure I have some other stuff I should be doing right now.
I recently started listening to The Commandline Podcast, the latest episode was a panel discussion with ESR on FOSS in daily life.
One of the things they talked about was the RedFly which is a keyboard and screen for your smart phone. Another device they talked about was the Nexus One and the Android operating system. Then someone said “prepaid gsm” and my imagination started to click over with ideas. Doing some checking on the RedFly, I found a video demoing a RedFly and an Android phone.
I wonder if I can find a data plan and a prepaid SIM card for an Android phone… and what that will do to me?
I have long said that I just wanted my phone to be a phone. That I don’t need email with me wherever I go because that would be BT (Bad Thing for those that may not have gone to LeTourneau University and been part of Dorm41.) But I keep seeing all the cool things that can be done with these mobile terminals people keep referring to as “Smart Phones” and…. yes, down this road lies madness. But I think I would have some company.
While glancing at Google News tonight I saw something that concerns me, namely, this headline from the Washington Post:
Supreme Court: Suspects must invoke right to remain silent in interrogations
The meat of the article is summed up by this quote:
“Today’s decision turns Miranda upside down,” wrote Sotomayor, who accused the majority of casting aside judicial restraint. “Criminal suspects must now unambiguously invoke their right to remain silent — which, counter-intuitively, requires them to speak. At the same time, suspects will be legally presumed to have waived their rights even if they have given no clear expression of their intent to do so.”
In an earlier Blog Post I posted a link to a video which explained why you didn’t want to talk to the police, ever. Now it seems that you have to, in order to tell them that you don’t want to talk to them.
After a rather frustrating morning in World of Warcraft on my teenage Draenei Warrior, with people queuing up as DPS and wanting to tank, and DPS wanting to pull, I decided to make a macro, we’ll see if it helps any if I tap this at the beginning of every run…
/p Tank Service Announcement
/p I’m a rage tank, it may take me a second or two to get agro, please be patient.
/p I try to pay attention to healers mana, but if you need mana, say so.
/p If you pull it instead of me, expect to have to tank it yourself.
I mean… it can’t get any worse… right?
There is a post over on wow.com that I think every World of Warcraft player should read.
Real ID security concerns explains a little bit more of what most of us already know about the system that is going to be part of Blizzards signature battle.net system, which will tie together two very different game worlds to begin with, World of Warcraft and Starcraft II.
The last two sentences are the ones that I hope people latch on to:
Just remember that this system is meant for your real-life friends and family and not for some guy who was a good healer in your ICC PUG last week. If you don’t know where to go to knock on the person’s door if something happens to your account, then don’t share your email address.
Hardly a week goes by that I don’t hear of someone either in a guild that I am in or a friends guild that had their account compromised. In some cases this is quickly resolved and they are back to playing in a week, in others it takes 2-3 weeks for them to get their gear back, and if they had access to the guild bank, those items back.
Trust me. You really don’t want to lash out in anger or frustration and punch an inanimate object.
This pic was taken about a week after I decided to punch the door on our refrigerator due to being…. upset. Yes, it hurt, yes I iced it right away.
The fun thing was that it didn’t really change color until a week later when it turned the yellow seen in the picture. It just swelled a little and was annoying. Now if I keep my palm flat and rotate to the right, like you know, to hit the enter key with my pinky or to get to the number keys on my keyboard, or to hit the backspace key, my wrist gets a little twinge.
That should go away on its own, right?
Now another itch is begging to be scratched. It’s another rabbit hole down which much time and energy can be dumped.
Can I switch from a Microsoft Windows Vista on my desktop to Ubuntu? I am writing this blog post from my old desktop which is currently running Ubuntu, and I am tempted. Oh my am I tempted.
The main drawback would be that my desktop is currently my primary World of Warcraft machine. And I use Ventrilo for raids… last time I tried that it didn’t work so well.
I know I should avoid this itch. I know that I have far too many things that I should be doing instead. But my inner geek soooo wants to scratch this!
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