Tonight we were at the LeAnn Rimes concert, in which there was a posted no-cameras sign at the entrance gate. As you will see later when I post 2-3 of my own, you might expect that this rule is not well enforced.

So what’s the problem? Of course, the problem is that you can’t buy a cell-phone anymore without a camera, just about. Thus, unless you are going to either check every cell phone, or not allow them at all, you aren’t going to keep cameras out of the concert. (Of course, these cameras are also small, so unless you plan to use a metal detector, you probably won’t notice the cameras [cell phones] anyway.)

Thus, it follows that there were a LOT of people taking pictures at the concert with their cell phones. Throughout the concert they would walk in front of the first row (between it and the stage) and pause long enough to snap a picture. This of course was very annoying for those of us in the first few rows. There was also no attempt on the part of security to prevent or curb this activity. After all, what are you going to do, short of making people cross the venue at the back?

So accept as a given that people will have cell-phone cameras. It no longer makes any sense to prevent the use of the vast majority of consumer-grade cameras, which are only marginally better than the current generation of cell-phone cameras. And not surprisingly, there were people using those as well. Oh, and the bigger ones too—no, not so big that they were bigger than someone’s head, but still quite big. People were also not shy about it as you might expect, quickly snapping the photo and then hiding the camera so as to pretend they didn’t take a photo. No, they would walk right to the front with their quite-obvious-camera, and take a picture, complete with flash. Oh heck, why stop at just one. Get another one while we’re up here, in case the first doesn’t turn out.

The woman seated just in front of and to the side got a bunch of pictures — many quite good (I know, because it was impossible to avoid watching her LCD screen as she setup the shot, took it, and then checked its quality. It was, after all, being held over the level of all our heads while she did so to avoid anyone in the audience being part of the photo).

So, I think the time may have come to abandon the no-cameras rule, since it is so clearly not actually applied. Instead, we should be thinking of ways to make the cameras less obtrusive during the show. Perhaps have a place people can go to shoot their shots which is out of the way of the main audience. Perhaps have a song break where you tell everyone in the audience to get their photos out of the way now, and then ask them to put the cameras away and enjoy the concert. Coming from the artist themselves, seems more likely to be heeded anyway. Perhaps tell the audience they can take photos but to NOT use a flash. Some of them still will, but if you couple it with a reasonable explanation of why you shouldn’t use a flash, I think many people will respect it. Also, have a big sign posted indicating that shooting photos is acceptable for personal use, which still lets you crack down on those trying to make a buck off their concert shots, while allowing those people who you really can’t stop anyway shooting a photo to post to Facebook.

After all, those Facebook photos are probably doing more to promote and benefit than they are to harm.

[Review: it was a good show, and the third-row center seats were excellent.]

So as a graduate student, I really didn’t understand the full extent of summer. Because I was not involved in classes the last several years, I had no idea how much better research productivity could be during the summer. I have had to deal somewhat with the students who didn’t get the grade in the class and want to re-examine that, but overall it’s great. I’ve heard many faculty this summer express a similar sentiment.

So to all - have a great summer! I fear it may be over far too soon.

At NSDI, which I recently returned home from, no fewer than two people exclaimed to me that I did not look at all like they expected. On talking to them about it, I’ve found that they were using my picture from my website/blog as a picture of me. (This is fair, since I did put it there.) The problem is I put it there 7 years ago and haven’t changed it. I’ve changed a bit in appearance since then. So I’ve updated the picture on my site/blog. For comparison’s sake, you can see both here:

My wife and I have recently been discussing the idea of canceling our cable TV. There are a variety of reasons for doing so, which include these circumstances:

• Cable TV is trying to push digital cable by removing channels from analog cable.
• We see no present value in the additional costs of digital cable. In fact, we see no value in getting bigger, sharper, TVs, as we feel the picture is just fine, and sufficiently large to see from our sofas a mere 8 feet away. So it’s not about quality. And it’s not about quantity either — the additional cable channels using a digital box are largely in three categories: replicas of channels available in analog cable, additional-fee channels, and music-channels. Of these three, the only ones we ever use are the music channels.
• We feel that a large portion of content created today is not worth watching. Our viewing preferences have actually narrowed somewhat — there are only two channels we watch with any regularity outside the broadcast channels. Yet, our flat fee paid to cable companies does not adequately reward content providers for making the content that we do like.
• More content is available online, or through direct-to-mailbox DVDs from Netflix or Blockbuster. Thus, if we don’t mind waiting a bit for content to become available in either online or DVD format, there’s no need for live broadcast anyway. Even better — when paid for by users, this content is generally commercial-interruption free and better quality than we get through the cable company anyway. I distinguish between commercial-interruption free and commercial free because as we know, the new wave is in product placement on shows. But at least it doesn’t contain those hideously large and non-silent network overlays from channels.

There are others talking this way as well. See this post over at Freedom-to-Tinker for a good read as well. And today, I read that cable companies want to offer exclusive channel content online to subscribers [story]. So this is my plea to programmers. Forget TV stations and network affiliations. Instead, sell your shows direct to viewers. Do it without ads (though I imagine you’ll still have product placement/endorsements), or at least have a two-tiered system where users can pay more for an ad-free program. Then, you will get a better picture of your viewers, and can probably do a better job of marketing to them. Online word-of-mouth can help your show catch on and grab followers. If you are worried about steady-income, offer us high-priced single-show samples, and more reasonable season buy-ins. I would much prefer this — so I can get just the 10-ish shows I actually watch rather than the vast array of TV programming I don’t care about.

So I’ve spent enough time giving you my downs on the MBP, that I kinda feel in fairness I should talk about things that I like about it. So here’s a partial list:

• UNIX Programming Environment. Since it runs on top of FreeBSD, a lot of the software I am used to working with in Linux either “just works” or is easy to port to the Mac. This includes my own research project Mace, and MythTV. This software has been easy to port to OSX, but either doesn’t work on Windows, or works after a fairly complicated set of steps.
• Better support for X11. Okay, technically this is related to the first item, but is work mentioning separately. To get X11 support on Windows, you either have to install an expensive third-party tool, or CygWin. CygWin is great (and I don’t think I could manage to use Windows without it), but its quite sluggish and X apps don’t quite integrate into the environment as well as you might like. The integration is still less than perfect, but much better on OSX, and I don’t feel the severe performance penalty.
• Marking up PDFs. I always used to complain about this — my adviser would send me marked-up PDF files, which I find annoying to work with. Plus, using Acrobat Reader, you can’t make any markings yourself, so its hard to make it a two-way street. Further, there isn’t (that I know of) any free software which does markups of PDF files on Windows. However, I discovered that the built-in “Preview” app on OSX supports marking up the PDF files. So when someone sends you a PDF and you need to mark it up, it is convenient.
• Time Machine. I suspect something similar exists on Windows, but I haven’t poked around enough to find the one which suits my needs. But Time Machine on the Mac is very convenient, and I feel confident that not only are my files backed up, but various versions of them, in case I discover I overwrote something important. Further, Time Machine was convenient and easy to find, setup, and use.

So it’s not all bad. It’s just not as good as it had been advertised to be.

In the things-which-demonstrate-mac-is-not-strictly-better-than-windows category, I have had the latest of such issues. In this case, I found on two occasions recently that the keyboard and mouse built into my macbook pro suddenly stopped working.

It appeared that the laptop was frozen, though it wasn’t. The power button brought up the shutdown dialog (which of course I couldn’t do anything with since the keyboard and mouse weren’t working). I did find that if I attached a USB keyboard/mouse, they would work. But in this case, even the “Windows” fix didn’t correct the problem. That is, even after rebooting, the keyboard and mouse continued to not work. After an hour or so of looking around for the solution, I discovered I had to reset the PRAM, which is part of the power functionality. Apparently, the laptop was in a quasi-confused state where it was powering most of the laptop, but ignoring the keyboard and mouse.

So I figured that would be it, and I wouldn’t see this again. But within 24 hours, the laptop did the same thing. Thankfully, this time I recognized it quicker, and it only took me 45 minutes to re-find a webpage where I could re-learn how to reset the PRAM. Granted, those 45 minutes were supposed to be minutes I was sleeping, but we won’t split hairs. Thankfully, the 36 hours since it hasn’t happened, but I’m just waiting for it to happen again. Unfortunately, when it does happen, the fix involves rebooting the laptop, thus losing any sessions you are building up.

For reference, to reset the PRAM (at least on the model MBP that I have), do the following: reboot the laptop. While it reboots, hold down the command key, option key, the ‘p’ key, and the ‘r’ key. Continue holding them down until you hear the second booting chime. Release the keys, and at this point the laptop will boot normally.

Sadly, this is only a corrective action, not a preventative one. Who knows how often I will have to do this. Hopefully, it won’t happen to you.

So this week I’ve been working on re-cabling our phone jacks to be Ethernet jacks. Since we get our internet through the cable company, use an VoIP phone, and wireless handsets throughout the house, we had no particular use for the phone jacks in the house.

At the same time, I do run many computers throughout the house, and while wireless was an OK option, it really wasn’t reliable enough for running the server from, meaning we had to put the server with the wireless router. This was a bit of a problem, as I’d like the wireless router in the higher floors of the house, and the server in the basement, where it’s noise and heat won’t be an issue. Similarly, I’d like to stream video and audio throughout the house, and wireless really isn’t the best option for this.

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So I realized yesterday that all the news about the New Year’s countdowns should be 3-2-1-1 were just dramatizations of reality. I guess I should have figured that all along, but got caught up in it myself. You see, the leap second was added at 23:59:59 UTC (coordinated universal time), and therefore, in my time zone, had been added to the clock 5 hours prior. There was nothing unusual about our countdown (at least, for the last 10 seconds).

But I have yet to find a reporter who actually reported what happened in Trafalgar square (or other places celebrating New Year’s with the UTC leap second in play). Did they start their countdown a second later? Or did they count some number twice? Or were they early? The public wants to know (or at least I do)!

So this year there will be a leap second added just before midnight, the first since 2005. As we all go to celebrate New Year’s, I wonder how this will be treated by the TV networks (I don’t recall how it was handled in 2005). Will we start our countdown one second later than usual, so that the 10 second countdown starts at 11:59:51? Or will we all actually celebrate the New Year one second too early? Perhaps the network will add their leap second early to avoid confusion. Will municipalities running fireworks shows start them on time? Do they launch fireworks at that second, or do they try to time it to explode at that second? Will the general public have any clue that a leap second occurred?

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/TECH/12/31/leap.second.new.year/?iref=mpstoryview

So we bought a 1000 piece puzzle from WalMart before Christmas for the family to put together, and last night we did so. However, there were a few problems with the puzzle. During the putting together of it, there were these pieces which we just became convinced they couldn’t fit anywhere in the puzzle. Though most of the time, we thought we were just kidding, that it would become clear eventually where they fit.

When we had put in “all” the pieces, there were three extras. There really were pieces which didn’t go in the puzzle. On further inspection, these pieces turned out to be duplicates of 3 other pieces in the puzzle. They really didn’t fit! And moreover, we had paired one of them with another and therefore couldn’t figure out where in the puzzle the two pieces went.

While it’s annoying to have been frustrated about these extra pieces, the more frustrating thing is that we were one piece short. While I cannot be 100% certain that we didn’t just lose the piece, I have to believe that since we have extra pieces, those are missing from someone else’s copy of the puzzle.

So how does this happen? Perhaps they lay them flat, and cut many together, then whisk them off. Then in this case, two pieces may be stuck together, and the whisking process just screwed up?

So if you bought an I Spy puzzle from WalMart, check and make sure it has all the right pieces. And if you have extra ones, let me know. Maybe we’ll start a puzzle-piece exchange to fix it up.

On the other end — the question becomes, how can you do quality assurance on jigsaw puzzles? How do you avoid this kind of production problem? Maybe I’ll do some research into the mass production of jigsaw puzzles to figure out how this happens and how to prevent it.