Category: Tech

This may just go without saying for some of you, but I’m gonna say it anyway.

Google Earth totally rocks.

I know that downloading has been disabled right now, because a couple of friends have told me that they get told to try again later when attempting to download it.

And, yes, I know, it’s only for Windows, and only on higher-end hardware. And you need a fast ‘net connection to make use of it, ’cause it streams the images off the internets.

But given all that, it still rocks. You can get a brief taste of it by going to Google Maps, searching for a location, like your address, and then turning on satellite images and then clicking and dragging around. Cool to see your neighborhood from above, like you’re flying around, right?

OK, now imagine being able to do that, and then angling down so that you’re looking towards the horizon as you glide along above your street. And then being able to search for, say, bars along the path. Searching for anything you could find in a Google Local search, really.

Or having a real-time tour of the driving directions from your house to, well, anywhere in the US or Canada. I think; I know they only recently added all the satellite images for outside the US and Canada to the Maps stuff so that might not be in Google Earth just yet. Give them time.

I’ve been using other software to map out my running routes, but this is now my favorite tool for it. I can pinpoint my half-mile marks based on actual landmarks, depending on how updated the satellite pictures are.

Google says they’re working on a Mac version. I’m not sure either of my home Macs are up to the challenge, though, being fairly underpowered machines. Might be time for an upgrade… For now I’m using my work PC.

And it’s free! For now. But Google has been all about the free-as-in-beer for end users, so it’s likely to stay that way for a while. In fact, the only feature they make you pay for that I can see is the ability to pull GPS data out of the program.

Go grab it if you can.

In other news, I installed Linux on my iPod this weekend.

I originally thought that this would be an interesting technical exercise. However, the interesting technical part of it is remarkably easy: download an installer, launch, and click “install”.

The other main reason I did it was because Linux enables some hidden functionality of the iPod hardware, functionality that Apple disables (or, more accurately, allows third-party vendors to enable, for a cost). iPods can record, using a microphone plugged in to their headphone jack.

It records in mono, but still, that’s pretty cool. I’ve been poking around to see if the limitation is hardware or software related.

And in terms of geekiness, this one goes to 11. Nifty to see the tiny iPod screen fill with the cascading text of a Linux boot-up sequence.

Only first, second, and third generation iPods are currently supported. Yet another reason for me to hang on to my old one if I ever decide to buy a new one.

Google may be a good company. They certainly do what they do very well, and are constantly coming up with new ideas and innovations all the time. (Side note: I use a subsidiary of Google to post, although my actual site is hosted elsewhere.)

TimeWarner, Inc. may be a bad company. The massive amount of disparate media controlled by one gianormous corporation has led, I believe, to a poorly-informed American public. That’s an argument for another time.

However, even if you accept my initial assertions, it’s difficult for me to then conclude that Google is worth more than Time-Warner. Google is worth 80-billion-with-a-“b” dollars? Really?

Someone wake me up from this nightmare.

Apple is switching their hardware to Intel processors?

I’m stunned. This is going to be a huge mistake, for so many reasons.

So… many… reasons…

Apple’s opening another retail store in my area.

Well… if you can call freakin’ Tualatin my “area”.

Why can’t they put one in downtown? There’s lots of retail space available downtown! I mean, the Trib did a story last week on all the empty retail space in Portland… mostly ’cause of the drugs and drug-users and crime, but, hey, that’s the price of progress. Right?

OK, this is geeky and stupid.

When starting up Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger), a window displays with a blue progress bar:

It turns out that that window is simply a place-holder until the LoginWindow process can launch. The progress bar? It does nothing, it measures nothing beyond guessing how long it will take before the LoginWindow process will come up, which it then uses to move the progress bar this time.

More details can be found here. The WaitingForLoginWindow process even logs how long it took to run, and has a freakin’ man page!

That’s stupid! I can’t believe that such a thing actually exists. I and other techs have joked about such a thing for years, but for someone to actually build an example and include it in a major release as some kind of tech placebo is beyond me.

For the longest time (which roughly corresponds to at least the entire time I’ve lived there) I haven’t been able to get DSL at my apartment. Qworst, which is in charge of the telephone wires in my neighborhood in accordance with their government-mandated monopoly (how do you break up a national monopoly? Why, you break it up into slightly-smaller but still predatory regional monopolies, of course, you silly rhetorical questioner!) has long offered the paradoxical answer of “Yes, but, no” to the question: “Can I, in fact, get DSL at my address?”

The “Yes” part of the answer means, in corporate-monopolistic-style verbiage, “Yes, it’s available in our list of options in that area!” but the “but, no” part of the answer means “but, because we’d have to spend money to replace all the crappy decades-old equipment in that area, we wouldn’t make any money on it until there’s enough suckers customers to pay us to install it, so all these stupid laws mean that we can’t actually sell it to you. Yet.”

The advantages of DSL over what I’ve had to settle for (Comcast cable modem broadband) is that, with a DSL line, I can have a dedicated, all-my-own IP address on the internets, and run a server out of my house. With a dedicated IP address I can have a domain pointed at the IP address, so that people wouldn’t have to remember a string of numbers that might change at any moment. Also, most companies that offer DSL don’t have restrictive terms of service like “If you run a server of any kind (email, ftp, porn, you know) we’re going to sue you and throw you into Gitmo as a terrorist and confiscate all your pretty shiny computers and spit on your friends and family and rape your pets and make fun of your personal consumer electronic device choices”, like, oh, say, Comcast does.

It’s so screwed. Comcast has faster download speeds, and decent upload speeds, but Cthulhu-forbid that you actually, you know, make use of those speeds. So, even though DSL is technically slower, it’s less-encumbered by restrictions of the legalistic type. Depending on where you buy your DSL service from, of course.

Here’s the problem: even though I could go to any of a number of places to buy DSL service (I’m thinking of Speakeasy, myself, but there’s lots of others and I haven’t decided yet)… it all comes in over your phone line.

And, therefore, because DSL comes into your house over phone lines… that means that, essentially, I have to deal with the local telephony monopoly at some point in the transaction.

Y’all may remember my epic battle with the local phone monopoly last year.

I did win that battle, though. Basically. It was a tactical victory. I had to give up my phone number but I got out of a two-year contract without having to pay any early-cancelation fees. And, of course, I got Qwest in trouble with as many as four different consumer-protection agencies. And I got to own the sexiest phone ever (even though it’s very high maintenance and even (shhhh! don’t read this too loud!) a bit… um… jealous, noIamnotkidding).

So the idea of dealing with them again, even through a proxy… well, let’s just say that my cockles remain cold. Unwarmed, even.

Hmmm. Still trying to decide.

Cool article (found it thought iPodLounge) on hacking a full-sized 3.5″ hard drive to work with a regular iPod.

My favoritest line:

Desoldering all 44 pins would be a chore, so I took the easy route and just ripped through the PCB with a Dremel cutting wheel.

Yeah. Dremels are cool.

This just might be the silliest accessory for an iPod shuffle ever.

…or the cleverest. I’m not sure which.

I feel guilty when I’m getting paid $30/hour to “clean up” a Windows PC. I feel guilty because I know I’m going to take several hours pretending I can “clean it up” before I finally get to the point where I bag it and just wipe it clean and start from scratch.

I feel even more guilty when I find out that it’s running Windows ME, which is shit even when compared to other Windows versions. It’s shittier than shit. It’s the shit that shit would shit out if shit could shit. Goddamn, Windows v1.0 would look at WinME and say, “You are shit.” Hell, DOS 6 would think WinME was, yeah, shit.

I’ve now spent three fucking hours and, yeah, I’m at that point. But I’m waiting for that one last spy-ware cleaning program to finish running, even though the little blue bar is only at 10% and hasn’t moved in five minutes. I think I’m going to take myself off the clock while this thing finishes running.