Category: Geekery

iPhone thoughts

Vicki made an off-hand comment to me the other day to say that according to AT&T I’ve fullfilled the contract I signed when I got my Treo and I’m eligible to get another phone if I sign up for another 2 year contract. Of course, my first thought was “iPhone!” My second thought was that this was a rather cruel thing to tell me when we’re officially in the blackout period when I’m not allowed to buy anything for myself for fear that I’ve made Vicki’s Christmas shopping harder.

I guess the question for today is “Would I want an iPhone even if I could buy one?” And I’m not 100% sure the answer is yes. Buying the Treo was a no-brainer: it could do absolutely everything my existing phone could do, and everything my existing Palm Tungsten E could do, which meant I could reduce my gadget load. It also tempted me to add data to my cell phone plan and so now I use it for email and for mild web browsing (ostensibly for checking weather while away from base, but used more often for checking my friend’s page while in boring meetings). If I could do everything I do with an iPhone that I do with my Treo and my iPod, again it would be a no-brainer. But that’s where it gets difficult. So let’s look at it piece by piece.
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I just don’t understand how people’s minds work

I got an email this morning to my waypoint generator email address asking where the person could get “waypoints for eastern Canada”. I asked if there was some specific problem with the waypoints that my generator provided? He responded that he couldn’t seem to get them to work with this list of three or four programs that he’d tried. I had never heard of them, so I looked up the ones I could find, and none of them said anything about supporting any data format that I provide in my waypoint generator (although one was listed as supporting GPX on the page that lists programs known to support GPX). I got the name of the data file that he’d produced from him and looked it up in the logs, and it appears that he’d generated a CoPilot file, a GPX file, and an AeroCalc file.

So it appears he was just trying random combinations of file formats and programs to see if he could magically find a combination that went together. I asked if that was what he was doing, and suggested he find a program that does what he wants and find what sort of data files it takes, he said that he was a pilot and a photographer, not a database expert.

I tried to explain that was like trying to open an Excel file in Photoshop, but I don’t think it’s getting through.

I guess I’ll never understand how people’s minds work. And I’m not entirely unhappy about that.

Some Of My Favourite (Steampunk) Things

Brian Scearce wrote this on a mailing list I’m on. It’s too good not to share.

To the tune of “My Favourite Things” from “The Sound Of Music”:

Steam-run computers with shiny brass fittings
Read-only memory: Jacquard-type pittings
Ethernet using just tin cans and string
These are a few of my favorite things!

LCDs lit up with shuttered white candles
Objects with actual ivory handles
Striking a bell for the part that goes “ping”
These are a few of my favorite things!

My latest million dollar idea

Every now and then I have an idea that I think would probably be valuable, but rather than running with it I just chicken out and document it. Sometimes it turns out to be a decently good idea (such as when I thought that there might be money to be made going around to homes and offices and running anti-virus and anti-spyware software on a regular basis, since most people can’t seem to be bothered to do it for themselves), and other times it turns out that somebody is already doing it (like when I had the idea of combining small/fast/expensive disk storage with bigger/slower/cheaper disk storage with even bigger/slower/cheaper tape storage, and software to stage data between the different levels of storage depending on usage patterns).
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Yeah, that makes sense

For years now, my employer has not allowed ssh out their firewall. But they do have a telnet relay where you telnet to a particular server in the DMZ, and then telnet from there outside. Yeah, believe it or not, they think ssh isn’t secure (or more likely, have never heard of it because it’s not part of a default Windows installation) but telnet is ok. Of course, imap, pop and nntp aren’t allowed either. Heck, even DNS isn’t allowed – you can’t resolve any external domain names from internal machines.

And because I don’t run a telnet server on my home server, I have to telnet to their relay, then telnet to a friend’s server, and then ssh from there. But that’s what I go through in order to access my home email, Usenet, check files on my home server, and do a million other things.

Today I got the word – no more telnet access unless you can make a business case for it. The smarmy email from corporate IT says “please try to find a more secure means of communication”. Well, sure, I’d happily switch to a more secure means of communication IF YOU HADN’T FUCKING BLOCKED THEM ALL AT THE FIREWALL.