Evan Deaubl

I normally try and keep politics out of my blog, but recent topics have prompted me to comment, more from a marketing perspective than anything else.  As I post this, Obama has been declared the projected nominee for the Democratic Party, and McCain has been the presumptive nominee for the Republicans since about 2002 (at least it feels like it’s been that long).  We’ve had many months to see them craft a message for their campaigns.  What is the result?
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I was kind of getting tired of Redoable, because it was a little too heavyweight for what I really wanted.  I like simple.  So I’ve switched to ScribbishWP, a much less busy theme for a, um, much less busy blog…

Since my initial review of Second Rotation, there has been a positive development.  The same night I posted the review on my blog, I submitted feedback through their feedback form concerning the issues I encountered with my trade.  When I checked my E-mail today, I had received a message indicated that they had initiated a payment for my cell phone at the same price they originally quoted.  The next E-mail was a Paypal receipt indicating I had received the money.

This is actually much more than I was expecting (call me cynical, but I actually wasn’t expecting to hear anything), especially since they weren’t initially going to pay for my cell phone in the first place.  It cost them a reasonable amount to correct the situation, but it is nice to see a company that is willing to go above and beyond to correct a mistake.  My opinion of them is much higher now.  The only (minor) misgiving I still have is whether their return practices will be changing, at least in cases where the device isn’t completely nonfunctional.  At this point, I am more than willing to give them another try.

UPDATE: Since my initial review, Second Rotation has done a lot to correct the problems I encountered with their service.  Read my followup for more details.

I recently attempted to sell a cell phone to Second Rotation, a service that buys used devices.  I was kind of stoked about the service, because if it worked out well, there would be a couple of other devices I could sell them from my arsenal, get them out of my hair and get a little cash out of the deal.  Alas, this happy relationship was not meant to be.

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My second headbanging experience with a Mac… I was adding a section to the website for my improv troupe, which required me to add another button to the sidebar. I had originally done the graphics using the Windows version of Fireworks, which is not available to me anymore on the Mac, so I figured I’d give the Gimp a spin. I created the button, and dropped it onto the website, brought it up in Safari, and the colors rendered incorrectly. In Firefox on the Mac, and IE on Windows, the graphic rendered correctly.

This ends up being a simple problem to fix, but it just took a long time to find the solution. The default color profile chosen in Gimp does not work correctly in Safari when saved to a PNG. In order to fix this, you will need to go to Image->Mode->Assign Color Profile…, select the option to open a profile from the disk, and open /System/Library/ColorSync/Profiles/Generic RGB Profile.icc. Once this has been selected, you can save your PNG, and it will render correctly in Safari.

Infrastructer, my blog for providing useful tips, tricks, and techniques on programming and the software development process, has launched.  Not much over there yet (well, nothing really), but please bookmark it.  I’ve already got plans for 9 posts in the works, and plenty more where that came from.

And I don’t know why I’m apologizing about my blatant self promotion.  This is my blog, after all.

I finally had my first truly painful experience on my Mac tonight. I have been playing around with getting a Hackintosh working (yes, I know, but I’ve bought two Macs in the last 3 months, and intend to buy a third when they refresh the Mac Pro line, so it’s not like I don’t support the cause ), and I was having a heck of a time getting Bluetooth PAN networking working so I could use my cell phone’s Internet connection. In fact, I was having so much trouble that I decided to try it out on my real Mac. Same problem: after pairing, the “Connect to Network” option is disabled.

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It’s been a while (read: 4 weeks) since I made my first post on my 30-day experiment on my little Mac Mini. It has been a fun little experiment, and it’s connected me with some of my vast amounts of archived data in ways I really hadn’t played with before. The end result? I’m going back to Linux. Yes, the siren song of the Mac almost had me, but then I pulled away. Why? Because I discovered that Linux is actually “good enough,” at least for my needs and desires right now.

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When I need to come up with a new name for a project, especially a “web 2.0″-ish kind of project, there are several methods I turn to. One of those is a tool called APG, normally used for password generation, but it includes a pronouncable password generation mode which is great for generating massive numbers of ideas for domain names.

You can either install the tool locally if you’re on Linux/Unix or Mac OS X with Fink, or run the tool online from a number of servers available at the “APG ONLINE” link at the top of the linked page above. I typically use the following command line to run it:

apg -n 100 -m 5 -x 8 -a 0 -Ml -t

If you use the web version, this translates to generating 100 passwords, from 5-8 letters long, using the pronouncable word generator with only lower case letters, and printing a pronunciation key with each word. Here is some sample output:

rihatwul (ri-ha-twul)
yojbin (yoj-bin)
bezip (bez-ip)
fekfon (fek-fon)
fawtov (fawt-ov)

A lot of these are fairly useless as domain names, but generating 1, 100, or 10000 of them is practically effortless. A quick skim over the list I’ve produced usually gives me at least one candidate that I can toss around and play with, and if not, I’m only seconds away from another list of 100. Just another way to get the creative juices flowing.

All is not well in computer land right now.  Windows Vista finally did something completely unacceptable to me by disabling protected Windows Media playback on an audio device that had driver “enhancements.”  I’m willing to accept DRM as long as it doesn’t affect what I do with my own hardware; this was the first and last time it will do so.  Vista is now junk as far as I’m concerned.  As far as my other choice, Linux, I’m starting to grow out of it.  Too much stuff just doesn’t work (at least not without hours of fiddling).  It’s an acceptable platform, but it’s no longer a good platform for what I need.  With the launch of Leopard, I figured now would be a good time to see if a more compatible choice was under my nose all this time.
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