Marty

Marty August 13th, 2009

Comcast has been airing commercials referring folks to a website that answers questions about their service versus FIOS. I want a few questions answered.

1. Who has the best service record? A related question, whose customers are the happiest?
2. Do you compress the TV image any more than what you get from the distribution? If you do, why do you do that?
3. Can you get cable cards? How difficult/easy is it to get one (or more)? How much does it cost?
4. Are there caps on Internet access? What are they? What happens when someone exceeds this cap?
5. Why did it take so long for Comcast to update their buggy DNS servers?
6. When will Comcast match the Internet speed, both download and upload, of FIOS? In my area that’s 10 Mbits up and down.
7. Why was a telephone support person so poorly trained that she insisted that Comcast didn’t issue IP addresses?
8. What’s the uptime for mail servers?
9. What’s the uptime for proxy servers?
10. What is your process for blocking someones access to the network, or email? A friend had her access blocked due to a complaint from someone about sending SPAM (at least that’s what the Comcast security guy told her). She wasn’t informed that this had happened and had to spend a long time on the phone before she finally got connected to someone who could answer her question.

That’s just a few questions that I have.

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Marty August 9th, 2009

A friend just moved from Comcast to Verizon. The building she is living in installed FIOS cabling and Verizon offered a good deal for folks to join. She already had Verizon phone and cell, and the promise of really high speed internet (both upload and download) for less money seemed to make sense.

Initially she was happy, 10 mega-bits down and up, verified at various speed testing sites, good TV reception and variety (not that important, she doesn’t watch that much TV), and good phone connections. Then her internet connection got flakey, requiring rebooting her system to get connected again. Testing the speeds revealed the download speed was still great, but the upload spead was dramatically reduced.

We will see what Verizon does, or does not do. Of course no company can be expected to be perfect. The results of this will tell the real story.

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Marty August 4th, 2009

An $18 Million contract was awarded to create the Recov.gov web site. Too bad it wasn’t open for bid, I could have done it for $1 Million.

Seriously, even a web site with a large amount of traffic could be done for much less. I’m sure it would require a fairly featurefull site, with many roles, and approvals, and a moderately complex security arrangement. It wouldn’t require a particularly large server though.

So maybe creating a site on SquareSpace.com could do it. A couple of months work by a few experienced folks could knock it out.

Maybe you would have to build it "from scratch". I would start with a toolkit, Ruby on Rails, or Drupal, or Django. One programmer, one professional designer, and say 10 managers (the government quota :-)) and that’s still only $1 million. Where is all of that money going?

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Marty July 24th, 2009

I went to see a movie yesterday. I don’t know when I started this, but maybe 30 years ago, I would take my birthday off from work and go to see a movie. I should have kept track of the movies, it would have been an interesting list.

I’ve taken to carrying around a bag most of the time I go out. Depending on what I’m up to, the bag might have a camera in it, my laptop computer, a book, some magic props, and sometimes lunch. I carried this bag to the theater.

As I was leaving, a fellow movie-goer noticed the bag and asked whether it was a purse or a satchel. I just laughed.

I went to see The Hangover, a comedy, just the right thing for an afternoon. One of the characters returns to the hotel room where the other characters are gathered and has a bag over his shoulder. One guy calls it a purse, the guy who bought it says it’s a satchel. Later on an over the top gay Chinese guy calls it a purse.

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Marty July 24th, 2009

I remember riding my bike into MIT when I was a student there. There was a locked area where you could put your bike. I always parked my bike next to the most expensive bike I could find in the area figuring that if someone was going to steal any bike, they would choose this other bike instead. It was never tested, the locked area was well secured and watched.

I’ve noticed a few high priced bikes chained in public places, bike racks, park benches, and railings, nothing too unusual about this. These aren’t the "tricked out" mountain bikes with the fancy looking rear suspensions. A lot of these bikes are inexpensive and generally low quality made to look expensive. No these are road bikes, the type used in Tour de France, what used to be called "10 speeds." The noteworthy thing is that at first glance these bikes look like old beaters. They look like someone just got a can of spray paint and applied it. Stuff is often covered in duct tape or black electrical tape. Under the covers are moderately high end bikes, one probably cost $3000. This is real urban camoflage.

I don’t know who the owners are, but I imagine these folks as a bit counter culture, rebels probably with a cause. Unlike many of today’s urban folks they aren’t into status symbols and conspicuous consumption. They understand quality, and are willing to pay for it, but don’t need to advertise it. They are clever. I imagine they are attrative, and dress smartly, but aren’t slaves to fashion. Dedicated cyclists are often peacocks, the cycling shorts and jerseys are usually skin tight and brightly colored, these folks were functional, but subdued clothing.

Yeah, this is all a fantasy, but when I see a bike like this, I have a smile. It makes me happy.

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Marty July 20th, 2009

A year later and I’m still going to Ray Goulet’s Magic Art Studio. If there is a similar shop in your area, frequent the shop and buy a few things every now and them to keep them going. Shops like this are slowly closing around the world.

Recap, on Saturdays Ray hosts lunch and a general get together. Around noon food is ordered from a local place that delivers, sometimes Chinese, often sub/pizza shops. Before and after the food there is discussion about anything and everything, with a high probability that magic will come up. There is no format, just friends getting together. This doesn’t happen often enough in general, people are all so busy and doing all sorts of things. I find it great to set aside Saturday afternoons just to hang out. It’s relaxing, entertaining, and often highly educational.

One thing that I sometimes do (and others do this too) is to just bring something out and practice. This will invariably get the attention of someone, they’ll ask what you are doing, I’ll explain and talk about some bit that needs work, and then I will often get some help. I was playing with Sponge Balls one day, just doing basic retention vanishes and such, and General Grant asked me to hand the balls over, and showed me a couple of things that I had never seen before. Another time I was playing around with the classic palm (I’ll be working on this for my entire life, I think) and Ray Goulet showed me his classic palm, which is pretty good, and gave me a mini-lesson on palming with discussion of other coin workers and few fun stories.

Recently General Grant brought someone new to the shop, a younger guy who is just starting out. He got a mini-lesson which started on using the breather-crimp, controlling cards, a bit on cutting cards on a table and in hand, and progressed to a (brief) demonstration and discussion of the classic force, I asked Ray to show him the rising card that he does that uses no gimmicks and no extras. I really asked so that I could see it again.

But that’s only the beginning, and maybe the least part of things. I’ve made several good friends and met a lot of interesting people. That’s the reason that I join clubs. That’s the major benefit. I’m generally pretty shy, so don’t just walk up to people and talk to them, this gives me someplace to go where I can talk about something that I know we have in common which leads to general talk about anything and everything.

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Marty June 21st, 2009

I’ve got too many interests for a single site, so I’m dividing this site up into sections that are special interest. I’ll be getting the domain names to match. The main page will have notices of links to the special sections and this page will continue to have my general blatherings.

Thanks for the interest.

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Marty April 14th, 2009

I was at the doctor’s office today for an exam. I’m seriously overweight, so weight-loss is a normal topic with my doctor. I’ve been losing weight slowly and still have a long way to go.

Jokingly he suggested getting on "Biggest Loser". After we both laughed, I said something like, "they really torture those folks don’t they?" He answered, "Yeah, they really do."

It came to me suddenly. The more astute probably already realized this, but all of these reality shows are so popular because we are all basically sadists. It’s fun to watch someone else be tortured. It’s okay since they don’t use bamboo shoots under the nails, or water torture, just humiliation and failure. We get to watch fat people tortured because they can’t eat what they want, or they cheat, and they are riddled with guilt, as they admit what they have done and humilate themselves in front of the TV audience.

But I bet you can make money doing this locally. Maybe a local show with local people who sign up to be tortured in front of the local TV audience. You can probably even get the participants to pay you since they would pay for weight loss programs anyway. Getting local health clubs to host some segments and to advertise on the show, food providers, and even weight loss doctors and clinics could be both featured and provide advertisement. Success rates would be about the same as weight loss programs in general, so standard disclaimers apply.

If you use this idea, be sure and send me some part of your first million.

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Marty April 10th, 2009

There are places in the world (maybe it’s coming here too!) where the ISP’s are required to keep records of every email sent and files accessed for at least a year. Usually these records are kept for a short while in case something goes wrong the ISP can use the information to fix the situation or to prevent it from happening again. But governments are requiring saving this information and passing the info on to the government.

The excuse is to prevent child pornography, but you can bet that it will be used for other things. I’ll let you guess what these things might be.

The only thing good that might come of this is that they should be able to track spammers more easily, but this will require a lot of work to sift through the data.

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Marty April 5th, 2009

There are many styles of magic. Some of them are creations of cultures and sensibilities. There were really Chinese magicians,  dressed in silk robes and performing their magic, a mix of juggling, music, acting, and acrobatics that was uniquely Chinese. Similar acts from other locals reflected the civilizations they came from. Over time much of it combined, Uneducated audiences, uneducated in the cultures that spawned these acts, were uninterested in distinguishing things and perhaps the performers stopped caring as well. I’m not enough of a historian to know.

Fast forward a hundred years or so and we find a number of Western performers whose acts were Asian themed, often Chinese, with acts that were honestly thought to embody Asian themes and mystique. There have also been  genuine Asian magicians, although in very small numbers.

Move forward to the recent past. There are lots of performers who have "Oriental Magic" as part of their acts. They have Asian style costumes with what they fancy as oriental style music, often spouting a gibberish combination of bits of Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and English (at least in the USA) with faux-accents.

Please don’t do Oriental style magic. It’s just too hokey and there is nothing to be gained from pretending to be Oriental, especially if it is truly "Oriental" rather than "Japanese" or "Chinese" or "Korean". I once saw a Chinese sticks routine done with pseudo Chinese costume, but with Japanese phrases and non-sense sounds which were more Japanese and Korean than Chinese. I found it insulting.

I feel the same way about Oriental style decorations. If you don’t know what that Character on the side of your prop says, then don’t use it.

This isn’t to say that you can’t do things with Asian themes, just that you should be respectful.

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