This has been a really hectic week for me given that school startup happened this week and several rather large projects wrapped up at work, oh, and I also redid a bit of Accounting 168. 

One thing I noticed though is that making a concentrated effort to read has really helped me feel productive on days that it just seems as though I live on the Computer/Network.  It’s really a refreshing project to make reading a priority (all my reader friends out there are laughing right now). 

Sometime soon, I’ve got to get a list of the books that are on my shelf from Urbana (many of which are of InterVarsity Press’ new inprint ‘Likewise‘).  On top of those, there have been a couple of other recomendations that I’m going to take up like ‘A theology of the body’ by John Paul II.

I’m currently going through my friend Paul Grant’s book, ‘Blessed are the uncool’ and I have to say it’s really quite good.  A further review will come, but essentially what he’s doing is deconstructing the idea of ‘cool’ culturally and what cool’s ultimate purpose is and the problems that come with it.  It’s made me rethink how I see some pieces of technology, for example, and how cool markets itself in the IT profession rather effectively by exploiting my demographic’s need for ‘the new’. 

For example, Windows Vista has been running on my desktop at work for a few weeks now and I’m finding that I dispise it in the worst way.  Typically, I like to try it new Operating Systems on my desktop prior to releasing them to others or preping for supporting them and Vista has taken over that spot.  The thing I’m finding is that it’s actually harder to do normal tasks and that I’m turning to my XP box more and more just to do basic things.  ‘Explorer’ is ridiculously cumbersome and there is no easy way to access network drives.  Ultimately, it will be the future, but it’s not MS’s best Operating System by any stretch. 

But here’s the thing, it looks cool.  That fundamentally disturbs me.  What disturbs me even more is reading reports of the countless features that were evicerated from the OS in order to make it out the door in time.  Preferrably, I would rather have a better functioning product than a new paint job. 

I’ve always believed that as a Christian I’ve longed excellence (and often I fall short, but that is another story), but reading Paul’s book really has helped clarify where quality is often replaced by cool.

Apple’s efforts to do quality are often opressed by their desire for cool.  A good example is the XServ RAID, which I’ve talked about ad nauseum on this blog but still remains woefully undermarketed by Apple.  The thing is that it’s probably one of their stronger products by far, including the iPod.  It’s too easy, it seems, to market cool rather than quality or even mask the two together.

You know, seven is a perfect number, so here is the seven phases of owning an ipod.  Enjoy

Is it just me, or has this heir apparent to slashdot’s success been compromised as of late.  What has been a nexus of the weird, the geeky and the just plain cool of tech on the web turned into an Apple PR engine.  It seems like there are always multiple copies of stories that show up that usually revolve around either Apple, the iPod and are usually posted from someone’s blog.

The other thing that has been frustrating me of late has been the growing number of inappropriate pieces that wind up on the site as well. 

Having to deal with all the stories marked NSFW (Not Safe For Work – you can guess what that entails), the multiple blog links (that usually go down under the strain) and the just crap that has show up late has me wanting to get my tech news elsewhere .

For you non geek readers, it’s been either slashdot.org or digg.com for the last 8 years giving regular tech news to the masses; it’s Publisher’s Weekly, if you will, for the publishing industry.  The problem with digg though is that is primairly user-driven content; it lives and dies by it’s readership.  Since it’s gotten a bit bigger, it tends to attract the lowest common denominator coupled with the site branching out into regular news has done it’s share to dillute the core audience.

Well, we’ll see where it goes; it’s done it’s share of not being impressive lately .

A lot of my friends are up at arms about a recent change to the popular social networking site, facebook.com.  They have added in an aggregate feed on each user and what activities that they’ve been up to while on the site and what recent things they have changed.  For instance, on my feed you can see who my friends are, what groups I’ve joined and when I’ve changed my status.

The problem is that most of the people on facebook have not idea the sensitivity of the information they post online.  On of my friends joined one of the groups complaining about the private information that is now easier to find when on his profile just lines below his stating that facebook was creepy was his home address, cell and home phone numbers and birthday; all information that is more useful in stalking, or identity theft, than what groups the person is involved in. 

Comm. theory says that people tend to blackbox mediated communication and that when they communicate online regardless of the site they believe that it is either only viewable by them or that only their friends will read it.  The truth is that most things you write online are forever committed to the Internet’s memory, if you will, thanks to sites like google’s archive and the wayback machine.  What I find interesting is that the feeds off of facebook are simply illuminating that fact for the throngs of people who are less than careful about what information that they are putting online; it’s essentially comparable to looking at yourself in a mirror and realizing that you died your hair purple, have ‘fool’ written in black crayon across your foor head and seeing a ‘kick me’ sign on your back.

Perhaps this will cause people to either flock away from facebook or think a bit more cautiously about what they post online.

p.s. This post is a feed into facebook as well; the original site is http://talk.bearla.com.

A series I started way back in March of this year is beginning to wrap itself up as I push the project into production.

You may remember the purpose of this is to give a bit of a primer and ethnography, of sorts, from a primairly Microsoft, IIS world to a Linux/Apache world.

Well, recently the second server came in and I’ve been getting heartbeat up and rolling.  The complex thing about this is that the nics that service the shared IP address must be in the same slot and referenced the same (i.e. eth0) otherwise sadness will occur. 

After the fold, a brief overview of heartbeat and a plea for questions.

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