jimmygo.com

OK.  They don’t really suck all that much - but they do suck at least a little.  Let me tell you how I know.

I have been using HostMoster.com as my hosting service for about 3 months now.  The main reason I switched to them is that they have a high storage/transfer ceiling, and their Terms of Service seemed like they would work for me.  Specifically, I wanted to host my music on a web server so that I could stream it to myself wherever I was (home, work, on the road, etc).  The only mention of CopyRight in their ToS said that “HostMonster.com is required by law to remove or block access to content appearing on or through the Services upon receipt of proper notice of copyright infringement”.

No problem, right?  So long as I password protect any music I post to my public folders, they won’t receive a notice of copyright infringement and everyone wins.  So I signed up for a two year contract  and started uploading.  One week later my site gets shut down for ToS violation.  A phone call reveals that it was for my music directory.  Why?  The law.  What law? They don’t know.  So even though they never received a notice of copyright infringement, they took my sight down and said that I violated the ToS.

So I had a choice - I could delete my music from their servers or I could pay for (but not use) my web host.  I decided to go the easy route and ask for a follow up email with details as to why my site got deactivated.  I deleted my music, my site was reactivated… but no explanation as to how I broke the law ever came.

I have since sent a follow up email, but still no response.  My mind is starting to think of creative ways to get their attention.  More to follow

I first read about the OpenMoko a little more than a year ago - but couldn’t justify the expense until my current contract with Verizon Wireless ran out (another motivator is that my current phone can’t hold a charge for more than 10 seconds).  Well - my contract is up now and I figured that I would be buying an OpenMoko and getting a new service provider as planned (Verizon is anti-consumer rights).

I went to their site, credit card in hand, only to find out that the OpenMoko is STILL under developer’s preview.  I could probably buy one and install a different OS, but I really do need a phone in my day to day life so I can’t afford to buy one and hope.  Tinkering is fun and all, but $300 is a lot to pay to not have a phone.

So today I am on the market for both a new service provider and a new phone.  I’m a wireless company’s wet dream.  I’m an open minded 20 something male with money to spend and only a vague idea of what I want.  I started out at wirelessadvisor.com which told me that options in my area are basically: Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T, Sprint, and Nextel.  I already have Verizon, so I’ll be staying with them unless any of the other providers can beat them.  The strongest motivating factor of staying with Verizon is that I am done with my contract with them - I don’t like their take on open technology, but I do like the fact that staying put leaves me with options in the future (in that I can drop them whenever I want).

T-Mobile. You have to start somewhere, right? I went straight to their plans page which immediately reminded me why I loathe phone companies so much.  Before I even see any of the price/minute plans I see that every one of their plans requires a two-year contract.  Every single one!  I don’t want to marry the bastards!  I can’t commit to whose house I’m watching the football game at this weekend - how can I be expected to commit to a company that I already hate?  Next!

AT&T.  I thought AT&T was gone… no?  Didn’t they get merged away? I could check - but I really don’t care.  A little digging shows that all the plans force a 2 year contract down your throat.  Maybe this is going to be a recurring theme?  Incidentally - I checked out the prepaid options… but that would just be too much to keep track of.  A per minute and per day fee with minute packages that expire periodically is just too much to keep track of.

Sprint.  One or Two year contracts.   Blah.

Nextel.  Turns out that Nextel and Sprint have merged.  I knew I heard about a merger somewhere.

I may be a very weird excerpt of the population, but I hate signing exclusive service contracts.  A contract to me says: “we can’t compete on our own merits, so we bribe you in the door and lock it behind you.”  Why trap someone in a plan they don’t like.  All of us have heard someone griping about their contract and counting down the days until it expired.  Why would a company want a customer pumping out all that bad publicity?  Just let people leave if they want - they will at least respect you for that.  Make your income stream dependent on quality services and fair prices and you will get customers… until someone does that I’m keeping my options open.

I recently installed Ubuntu (a user friendly flavor of Linux) an my Acer Aspire 3000. It was my first time installing Linux and it was amazingly easy. Sound, video, and ethernet all just worked. In my opinion the install process was much easier than installing Windows. Also cool is that Ubuntu actually comes as a Live CD which means that you can boot it up and check it out without committing.

The only thing that wasn’t completely automatic was getting the Broadcom wireless card to work. I had to dig around a little on the Ubuntu Forums but eventually I stumbled upon compwiz18’s script (directions here) that worked like a charm. Of note: the light on the front of the laptop that indicates power to the wireless card worked for me without the acerhk driver.

Anyway, I’m sure I’ll screw up the install somehow (installing Beryl maybe?)… so this post is really just a note to myself so I can be back up and running ASAP.

I was recently reading a Slashdot article about how we are stuck with the x86 architecture because its been in use for so long. Everyone’s used to it… its what we have. Whatever.

Someone (J.R. Random actually) made a flippant comment that struck me as odd: “The x86 instruction set will be retired in the same year as the QWERTY keyboard layout.” This intrigued me. I had never put much thought into how or why our keyboards are laid out the way they are. I certainly never knew that there were alternative keyboard layouts.

It turns out that the QWERTY keyboard (so named because of the five letters on the top left side of the keyboard) was infact optimized for performance. Just not the sort of performance we would normally be looking for. Apparently the guy who originally designed the QWERTY layout (Christopher Sholes) designed it so that it would actually be hard to type quickly! He did this because he was a typewriter designer, and anything over about 20 words per minute sometimes caused his typewriter to jam. Rather than redesign his typewriter he laid the keys out so that it would be hard to type fast. He did so by spreading the most popular letters as far apart as he could - which slowed most people down enough that jamming wasn’t a problem. Brilliant!

Sholes’ typewriter had some revolutionary features for its time. Long story short, it was so successful that it become an unofficial standard. Government offices started buying them, schools popped up to teach secretaries how to use them, etc. Eventually typewriters evolved enough so that people could learn to actually go fast, and before you know it, everyone was used to this design that was originally intended to make typists type slowly.

40 years down the road August Dvorak saw a movie of someone typing and thought that the finger movements were really inefficient. He made his own keyboard that would allow for faster more efficient movements: the “Dvorak keyboard”. He put all of the vowels on the left side homerow and all the most common consonants in the top or middle row for the right hand.

The Dvorak keyboard is supposedly better in every typing category (more speed, easier to learn, less finger fatigue/injuries) except for one: prevalence. Everyone in the typing world was already learning on QWERTY keyboards. Almost everyone who has been exposed to Dvorak’s keyboard agrees it is superior to QWERTY, the only reason we stick with QWERTY is that it was here first.

Well… I have decided to give a go of switching to Dvorak. Anyone that is currently running XP, Linux or a MAC can just change the settings of their computer so that it is a Dvorak. Windows users can look here to see how.

According to this free speed test I can currently type around 65 wpm on a QWERTY.

I’m going to practice typing DVORAC for a few weeks and go back and try again. The comparison will be slightly skewed as I’ve been typing on a QWERTY for 15 years… but if Dvorak is really superior I shouldn’t have any trouble catching up to my QWERTY skills in just a few weeks.

Note: I got most of the above details regarding the development and popularization of the QWERTY from Jared Diamond’s “The Curse of Qwerty”, which is actually a really good read.

I have been trying to think of a good reason to play with the newly released Google Maps API, but I couldn’t motivate myself to sit down and learn it without a project in mind. I actually have some “kind of good” projects that I COULD do, but nothing too neat.

Nothing too neat until my brother called a few days ago and asked if I could do something for him. He works for the Coast Guard on a buoy tender. They have a hundred (or so) channel markers (buoys) that they take care of. Right now they keep the data on them in an Excel “spreadsheet”, which can be rather tedious. He asked for a way to put them on a map and display info on whatever one is clicked. My moment had arrived! His request was screaming for a Google Map implementation.

I took his spreadsheet converted the relevant information into an xml file. Then I made a little Java/HTML page to display the dang thing on a browser. Only hitch I ran into was making the sidebar load properly in Internet Explorer. For whatever reason the Coast Guard won’t let people install Firefox… whatever. What I should have done was make a two column CSS layout. But I didn’t. I’m stubborn. It SHOULD work with tables in an elegant fashion (in both IE and Firefox at the same time). I spent hours fiddling with different “overflow” options, and IE just never worked right (without making it not work in Firefox). As an interim fix, I think I’ll make a drop-down box style page. I’d be happy to hear anyone’s work around on the IE table overflow issue though.

In the mean time… this is what I have so far:

• USCGC’s Buoy Map Thing for Firefox
• USCGC’s Buoy Map Thing for IE
• USCGC’s Buoy Map Thing as a drop down wussy compromise. (actually I think this looks better, but I couldn’t get it how I ORIGINALLY intended)

My friend Gary gave me a good idea for a “friend monitor”. It’d be easy to make a site just like the above that keeps track of people with whom we are cool. I can’t think of any particularly good uses for the thing… would just be neat. Especially if everyone had a personalized icon.

ANYWAY… say what you will about Google mining all of our personal data. They are giving us some fun free functional toys to play with.

UPDATE: 03 April 2007. I was asked if I could make the markers appear as their appropriate color (usually red or blue but some are striped). This was a relatively easy task with the API. I had to add a “color” field to the xml data and draw the funny striped “buoys”. The result is here.