So a couple weeks ago our gas grill stopped working. Right in the middle of cooking. Originally, I thought we were just out of gas, so I had swapped it out with our spare tank we keep on hand for just such an occasion. But I could not get the grill to re-light. I couldn’t hear the gas either, which I usually can do. I re-tried many times, before finally giving up. Later on, after doing some debugging, I had decided to try replacing the regulator. Unfortunately, despite using a wrench, etc., I could not disconnect the old regulator/hose assembly. At this point I was fed up. The grill was I think about 6 years old, so it lived an okay life.

In deciding what to do about it, I did not envy the thought of replacing it with another gas grill. Gas grills just seemed to me to be overly complex, with a large number of parts which can break and stop working. Couple this with the fact that I’ve never been as happy with the gas grill as I wanted to be — the burners worked pretty well on low and high, but anywhere in between, and they would flicker out and back on, which was always puzzling. Plus, I have to say I never felt like the gas grill made foods taste all that “grilled”. I’m not sure how much benefit it had over the gas range which I had indoors. That flame was consistent, reliable, didn’t run out, was self-lighting, instantly ready, and did not require me to cook in the outdoor elements. So, my go-to grill was the cast-iron grill tray on the gas range, or sometimes, the George Foreman.

So, in looking at new charcoal grills, they were cheaper, promised more-grill-tasting food, fewer parts to break. After all, in the end, it’s basically a fire-safe kettle you put charcoal in. The Weber grill I got had the added feature of a one-touch ash-sweeping system to make it easy to keep clean. It took all of 30 minutes to assemble, and the only tool it required was something to tap the caps on to keep the wheels from sliding off.

Pros and Cons are pretty well established across the internet, but here are a few considerations I went through:

• Cost: Gas grills are more expensive, but the fuel is supposedly much cheaper. If I the grill is $200 cheaper, and you grill 20 times a year, and your grill lasts 6 years (like my last one), you would have to save $1.66 per meal to make the difference up. I’m not saying it’s impossible, just that I’m not convinced the cost is all that significant either way.
• Convenience: Gas grills are instant-on, while charcoal grills take more effort and time to get started. Technically, this one is true. However, the starter on my gas grill didn’t last long, and then I needed to use a lighter to start it. Next, I never knew how much gas was left to know when it might run out. Also – as for the instant-on: I always needed to clean the grates before use, so it wasn’t like I could start cooking immediately (not to mention pre-heating the grill). Now, perhaps the charcoal takes longer, but since I generally use that time to prep the food, it seems to be about the same amount of pre-prep in both cases.
• Taste: The charcoal grill definitely is more grill-like in it’s taste. Plus, I can add fresh herb sprigs to add some smoke to the cooking. Very cool.
• Cooking simplicity: I have to say, the actual cooking seems pretty nice. Putting the lid down, and just waiting an amount of time for things to be done is great.

I’ve used the grill 4 times now. The first time was an utter failure (I didn’t figure out how to start it properly). Then we had friends come over to show us how it works. Since then I’ve grilled twice, and both times came out great. So, I’m now a happy charcoal grill operator now.

Does anyone want two propane tanks for the exchange system? One is full. The other has an unknown amount of propane (could be empty). I won’t be using them anymore.

Generalizing this out, it is basically illustrates the principle of keeping it simple. The gas grills are more complex, more features, more money, and should be easier and better to use. But for my use, the charcoal grills are more durable, reliable, predictable, and therefore useful. Software often follows the same principle. When we add a lot of complexity to it, we generally add bugs, issues, and make it much harder to know what the software will do. So in summary: keep it simple. Even if you lose some features or flexibility, you may make up for it in the bigger picture.

Well, this morning I went and bought an iPad. So far? Very pleased. This post is written using an app for wordpress, which is quite nifty! I especially like the NPR app so far.

So one feature of the iMac which I hadn’t really considered was that it comes with SnowLeopard. On the one hand, this seems like a good idea, since it’s the latest Mac OS. However, in my experience, I actually prefer these days to be slightly behind the curve on OSes, since it usually takes a while to get all of the kinks out of the systems.

One such kink was the support for the Apple Remote. We did eventually get one from our local Best Buy (amusing side story: I had checked availability at the store online, gone in to buy it, and been told by the clerks that they didn’t have any. I went home, observed the availability still online, and so I bought one for in-store pickup. A few hours after that, I got the email telling me to go pick it up, which I did.) Unfortunately, the Apple Remote did not “just work”, like things are supposed to on the Mac. Looking further at it, I saw that in fine print on Hulu Desktop, it very clearly states the same problem.

Oh well. After scouring the forums, I discovered people linking to candelair, a free software driver from the makers of RemoteBuddy for OSX to resolve the issues with the remote on OSX. So I’ve installed it, and now our Media PC works nicely by remote (no configuration necessary for FrontRow, HuluDesktop, Boxee (+Netflix), and MythFrontend). Now, if only the Apple Remote had more than 6 buttons, which would be really nice for MythTV!

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.

Just as a quick update, this afternoon I had another problem which isn’t “supposed to happen” in MacOS. When I arrived home from school, my laptop was burning hot in my bag. When I opened the screen, there was an error message telling me I needed to hard-power cycle my macbook by holding in the power button, because of an error. It was a kernel panic, but the laptop was left in some continuous processing loop, with the fan spinning, but doing no good in my bag, while an unhelpful message was telling me to power cycle it. So much for Mac’s “Just working”. At least with other OSes, I expect such errors, and am very careful about making sure they aren’t happening.

So I’ve been using the MBP for a while now, and it’s still taking some getting used to. It’s also still just “okay.” I wouldn’t say I’m overwhelmed with how much better it is than Windows.

Moreover, I installed updates today, and upon reboot, found that a new icon was present in the menu bar. And not just that, it gave me a nag message, asking me to sign up for MobileMe.

I have to agree with the vast number of users writing complaints that this new “feature” was unrequested, unauthorized, and undesired. (I won’t link to them here, but just a quick internet search will find them). Tactics like this will probably renew my desire to be using an opensource OS on my laptop, and there is a reasonable chance I won’t stick with Mac when it comes time to get another new laptop.

Granted, I’ve ruled out Windows too, so I’m not sure what will be next. Back to linux, and the headaches of not having powerpoint plus dealing with projectors? Perhaps opensolaris?

As an aside – also after installing the updates, my trackpad stopped working until I powered the machine off and back on — another fix which is supposedly only supposed to happen on Windows.

So after 28 years of never using a Mac, I now have one. I got it for work, in my continuing endeavor to try new things on work computers. My desktop will still be a linux PC, but my laptop is now a Macbook Pro. I’ve only had it a few days, so I don’t have a lot of thoughts about it—though I still have an open mind.

Pros:
- It looks shiny
- With a massive amount of RAM, it runs quite smoothly
- Better integration with X and native X open-source applications than achieved through Windows (and e.g. CygWin)

Cons:
- Whole new keyboard with different buttons which do different things (will take time to get used to)
- It hides what it’s doing even more than Windows, leaving the user to have no clue what’s happening behind the scenes
- New multi-touch pad is different and doesn’t have a second mouse button
- Did not come pre-installed with any games
- I really miss the home and end keys. What does exist for home and end are, first two-key combos, and second, they are more like a top-and-bottom. I don’t yet know how to go to the beginning and ending of a dialog box I’m typing in.

So anyway, there are things I like and don’t like, but there’s a lot which I won’t know until I get used to it more.

I should start by explaining I regularly run my web browser with cookies disabled. The reason is that I decided websites are tracking you too closely, and especially websites which you didn’t even know you were visiting. For example, open up your cookie list. (In firefox, this is: Tools->Options (under Windows, Edit->Preferences under Linux), then Privacy->”Show Cookies”. The questions to ask yourself are:

1. How many of the sites listed do I even recognize?
2. Of the sites I do recognize, what do I want that site to remember about me the next time I visit?

Cookies, you see, are files that a server gives to a web browser, and asks it to present them whenever they visit a set of pages on a set of sites. Cookies have a number of legitimate uses, most notably to give the browser a “session” id. The “session” id is used so the browser user can, e.g., log in, and have the server remember keep track of information related to the login. (The other option, not using cookies, is to make the sessionid part of the URLs, which is both ugly, and more likely to be logged by third parties such as proxies and caches run by ISPs)

Then there are some arguably useful features of cookies. For example, many online retailers will set a cookie identifying you at your browser, and recognize you immediately when you visit again (not for purchasing, but for welcoming, tracking the products you look at, so to remind you of past products you’ve visited and to suggest new products based on your viewing history. I personally find that a little creepy, though I admit in some cases it can be valuable. A few years ago, there were even reports of sites using cookies to do Dynamic Pricing (story by CNN), a practice where sites change the prices based on information they keep about the customer. There were reports of users visiting Amazon from a new computer, finding an item they like, then logging in, and seeing it for a new price. In my opinion, these types of things outweigh the possible positive benefits from having a site remember me just for cause.

Next there are in my book some outright despicable practices. Advertisements placed on sites will add cookies which get reported back to these tracking sites anytime you visit any site with an advertisement from the same company. As a result, there are sites which simply compile vast amounts of information about where you go and what you do online, to use in any way they seem fit. These are commonly called “Tracking Cookies” by products such as Ad-aware and Spybot, which will remove the ones they recognize for you.

I have simply taken the approach (mostly as an experiment) that sites shall not store cookies without my express consent. To that end, I have installed CookieSafe, which makes it easier to manage cookie settings. I either give or reject cookies from specific sites. This occurs as a site preference, meaning if a site uses both kinds of cookies, and I want to use the site, I accept them both. Importantly, the third-party cookies are still rejected — I have to authorize them separately.

So my browsing works like this: I browse normally, then if a site isn’t working (and particularly if submitting a login doesn’t work), I realize it needed cookies to work. I then decide if I really want to use the site, and if I do, I enable cookies for that site only.

Now, when I view my list of cookies, I can identify most of the sites. (Some I must have authorized, but don’t quite recognize by site name, like the third party my bank uses to process online billpay.). I find this to be much more acceptable, and my browsing hasn’t been worse for the wear.

A few days ago, however, I saw something that really brought a smile to my face. On a site I visited while trying to figure out what it meant to buy fertile eggs, I saw this image, where an ad belongs:

I just had to laugh. If a site wants to not send me ads because I reject cookies — then great! I didn’t want them anyway. But somehow I think they’ve missed the point of advertising. If I were they, I would send SOMETHING back. But all the same – I hope other sites take this approach. It could be the end to all the annoying flash ads I get, if instead I got these images everywhere!

So for some time I have been using Gallery as my picture site, and I’ve been quite happy with it overall (my prior post about it notwithstanding).

In recent versions, I have noted a reference to a “Google SiteMap” in the administration pages. Being ignorant of them, I ignored it. Yesterday, I decided to look a bit further into it to understand them. This was partly because lately I’ve felt like a large amount of my server bandwidth has been taken by search robots, and I wondered/hoped that the sitemap would make the crawler use less bandwidth.

(more…)

So I’ve been working with Kristina to set up her website/blog. Using WordPress to write a whole website is a quite interesting concept. In contrast: this site, or Tom’s blog, do more of embedding a WordPress blog in an otherwise functional site. But to setup a site in WordPress, you actually write all your web pages using its web interface, and tell it how to structure them.

But one of the issues is that a common practice in a website is to create a page which you don’t include in menus, but you might, say, link to it from a few special places such as an email, making it a sort of “hidden” page. But you don’t want people to have to log in to see it, you just want them to know the URL.

This idea has been suggested to wordpress, but the last comment was 6 months ago, and I’m afraid no good solution has been proposed yet. There is a workaround for the tech-savvy, namely modifying your theme to specially exclude the id of the page you want to exclude. This has two problems: (1) When doing so, the page was excluded, but some html was still generated, because it changed the formatting of the link list. (2) At kcubes.com, themes are shared across blogs, which means that if somoene else chose a specially modified theme, they would have confusing results.

Does anyone know other solutions? Is there a plug-in which provides this feature? For a while I thought “Private” would do what we wanted, but apparently that requires you to be logged in to see it. And while I’m griping, why does “wordpress private pages”, when typed into google, not give you a clear description of what exactly private pages are?