The content on this site is my own and does not necessarily represent my employer’s positions, strategies or opinions.



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Daily links for 03/12/2010

  • “Enterprises rolling out new opensim grids are often concerned about security issues of running OpenSim, and justifiably so. OpenSim is alpha software and still poses some security challenges. However, the security level of a particular OpenSim deployment depends quite a bit on how it is configured.”

    tags: opensim, security, virtual-world

  • “Below are the candidates for the Federal Virtual World Challenge.
    You are welcome to read about and review each entry.”

    tags: virtual-world, government

  • “PHP is an easy-to-use, easy-to-learn, widely accessible programming language. It’s well suited for developing simple scripts you can use to help you in all kinds of games. Whether you play simple pen-and-paper games by yourself, complex tabletop role-playing games with a group of people, or online games of any kind, this series will have something for you. Each article in this “30 game scripts you can write in PHP” series will cover 10 scripts in 300 words or less (3d10 stands for “roll three 10-sided dice”) simple enough for even a beginning developer, but useful enough for a seasoned game player. The goal is to give you something you can modify to suit your needs, so you can impress your friends and players by busting out your laptop at your next gaming session.”

    tags: game, scripts, php

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

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2010 photos of late winter / early spring flora

Every year I find it hard to resist slipping out of the house on warm sunny days in late winter and photographing the first flowers that break through the ground and snow. Here’s this year’s batch:

Late winter 2010 Late winter 2010 Late winter 2010 Late winter 2010

Here’s what things looked like in March, 2005.

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Webcast: “Cloud Computing Made Easy with IBM and Linux”

Judith Hurwitz, Adam Jollans, and I are hosting a webcast on Wednesday, March 17, at 12 noon ET called “Cloud Computing Made Easy with IBM and Linux.”

From the description:

If you are implementing cloud computing, or considering clouds but still have questions, don’t miss this webcast. You will learn about cloud computing in simple, straightforward terms, from industry analyst, Judith Hurwitz, author of the new white paper on Linux and Cloud Computing, and co-author of “Cloud Computing for Dummies.” Find out why Linux is so well suited for cloud applications and how IBM’s cloud offerings and Linux make cloud computing easy from Dr. Robert Sutor, IBM Vice President, Open Source and Linux. Hear Judith’s top predictions for clouds in 2010 and get some practical guidance on implementing cloud computing in your organization in this webcast.

Please join us! Attendees will receive the complimentary white paper “Linux and Commercial Software: Combining to Support the Cloud Environment” by Judith Hurwitz.

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Daily links for 03/11/2010

  • “You get one choice. You buy Microsoft and you’re locked into Microsoft. You can’t go back.

    In Microsoft’s world its formats and open source are the two children, and you get to make one choice. Then you have to move on.”

    tags: microsoft, open-source

  • “Being in the red now doesn’t mean that the company–funded in part by Shuttleworth’s proceeds from selling his earlier company, Thawte Consulting, to VeriSign for $575 million in 2000–doesn’t plan to be in the black. Canonical has three main businesses: selling server management services to companies using Ubuntu Linux; working with original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) such as Hewlett-Packard or processor companies that need help with Linux; and most recently, an Internet-based tool for buying and synchronizing music files and other personal data.”

    tags: linux, ubuntu

  • “What Freescale announced, and demoed in the video below, is the i.MX51. It is a 7-inch tablet that comes in multiple colors, and can run three different operating systems: Android, Chromium OS, or Linux. The demo tablet is used with a keyboard and mouse, but touch features exists as well – The Chrome Source reports that there was another demo tablet running a capacitive touch version of Linux.”

    tags: tablet, linux

  • “IBM is embarking on a research project to design mobile gadgets that are easier to use for people who have disabilities or aren’t fully literate.”

    tags: ibm, mobile, accessibility

  • “There’s a large selection of free and open source (FOSS) operating systems available these days, and choosing the right one for any given circumstance can be quite a challenge. This article is intended to help you pick the best operating system for your needs and experience level. Although this article is geared primarily toward those who have little to no experience with FOSS operating systems, we’ve included some pointers for more savvy open source users – say, those who use a FOSS operating system at home and would like to deploy one on the job.”

    tags: open-source

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

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Daily links for 03/10/2010

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

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Daily links for 03/09/2010

  • “Last year, as the physical economy withered, Second Life’s economy blossomed, with user-to-user transactions topping $567 million in actual U.S. currency, a 65 percent jump over 2008. About 770,000 unique users made repeat visits to Second Life in December, and the users, known as residents, cashed out $55 million of their Second Life earnings last year, transferring that money to PayPal accounts.”

    tags: second-life, virtual-world

  • “HTML 5 aims to change all that. When it is finalized, the new standard will include tags and APIs for improved interactivity, multimedia, and localization. As experimental support for HTML 5 features has crept into the current crop of Web browsers, some developers have even begun voicing hope that this new, modernized HTML will free them from reliance on proprietary plug-ins such as Flash, QuickTime, and Silverlight.”

    tags: HTML

  • “ESPN had previously used the services of Move Networks, based in American Fork, Utah. But Move’s system required that customers download a special video player that uses Microsoft’s Silverlight technology, said John Kosner, senior vice president of ESPN Digital Media. The network wanted to make its site easier to use by moving to a supplier that used Adobe’s popular Flash software, which operates within the Web browser.”

    tags: baseball, espn, silverlight, microsoft

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Daily links for 03/09/2010

  • “Filling a position left open since 2008, former Novell CTO Jeffrey Jaffe has taken on the role of chief executive officer for the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium).”

    tags: novell, w3c

  • “Last year, as the physical economy withered, Second Life’s economy blossomed, with user-to-user transactions topping $567 million in actual U.S. currency, a 65 percent jump over 2008. About 770,000 unique users made repeat visits to Second Life in December, and the users, known as residents, cashed out $55 million of their Second Life earnings last year, transferring that money to PayPal accounts.”

    tags: second-life, virtual-world

  • “HTML 5 aims to change all that. When it is finalized, the new standard will include tags and APIs for improved interactivity, multimedia, and localization. As experimental support for HTML 5 features has crept into the current crop of Web browsers, some developers have even begun voicing hope that this new, modernized HTML will free them from reliance on proprietary plug-ins such as Flash, QuickTime, and Silverlight.”

    tags: HTML

  • “ESPN had previously used the services of Move Networks, based in American Fork, Utah. But Move’s system required that customers download a special video player that uses Microsoft’s Silverlight technology, said John Kosner, senior vice president of ESPN Digital Media. The network wanted to make its site easier to use by moving to a supplier that used Adobe’s popular Flash software, which operates within the Web browser.”

    tags: baseball, espn, silverlight, microsoft

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

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Really setting the default browser on a Mac

I was having a problem last week with my Mac: even though I set my default system browser to Google Chrome, one application just refused to believe it wasn’t Firefox any longer. (And no, that application wasn’t Firefox itself!)

Though I tried several times within Chrome and Firefox to toggle the system browser to end up being Chrome, that one application was being recalcitrant.

Today I got an email from my friend and IBM colleague Kelvin Lawrence with the workaround to the problem: go into Safari and under Safari > Preference > General toggle the browser to something non-Chrome and then back to Chrome. This seems to do something a little extra and it did the trick. That one application now opens web pages in Chrome.

Thanks for the fix, Kelvin!

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Daily links for 03/08/2010

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

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A winter walk on the Erie Canal

This afternoon the temperature made it up almost to 50 F here in northwest New York State. This is certainly above normal, which only starts to make up for the very cold but relatively snowless winter this year. I had several hours to kill this afternoon so I took a walk along the Erie Canal. Specifically, I took a visit to Lock 32 near Pittsford, New York.

There are hundreds of miles of trails along New York State’s canals. At the point where this photo of a sign was taken three generations of canals forked. The first two turned north near here and went through Rochester, while the current Barge Canal stayed more south and went below the city on its trip westward toward Buffalo.

Erie Canal

While quite wide in places, the canal is not neatly framed with concrete along its length, though there are certainly some areas where it is contained that way. Here, looking west, the canal spreads out and bends in the distance.

Erie Canal

The northern side of the canal has these iron tie-ups every hundred feet or so. The water level in the canal is dropped in winter starting in November, and it is raised before the canal reopens in May for boat traffic.

Erie Canal

Here’s the western side of Lock 32. The lock gates are open slightly on both ends and some water can flow through it during the winter, though most goes through the sluiceway on the southern side.

Erie Canal

On the eastern side you get a better idea of the crushed rock along the banks used to prevent erosion and maintain the shape of the canal. The building in the distance is a boathouse. I was one of the few people walking along the canal who did not have at least one dog with me.

Erie Canal

This gives you a better idea of how much lower the water level is now than it will be come summer. It wasn’t difficult to get down to this point, though it got quite muddy below the crushed rock.

Erie Canal

This sign gives more of the local history of the canal and the boat building history of Pittsford.

Erie Canal

Someday I hope to rent a boat and lazily travel the length of the canal, though only my son among my immediate family members shows any interest of joining me. I’ve been trying to convince them for years, so I may need to extend my invitee list!

Also See:

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Daily links for 03/07/2010

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

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Two photos on the inevitability of Spring

Though official Spring is still two weeks away, and “meteorological Spring” is several weeks ater than that here in northwest New York State, it’s possible to find some signs that Winter really is coming to an end.

Here are a couple of photos from yesterday: a bunny being sold at the local farm supply store (“just in time for Easter”) and a shoot from a bulb coming up in a warm part of the front garden.

bunny shoot
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Daily links for 03/06/2010

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

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Oh, the indignity!

statues in a grocery cart

I had to make a quick run to the grocery store yesterday and while I’m used to seeing statues, religious and otherwise, in gardens, this seemed to me to be a strange and awkward location for one.

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Daily links for 03/05/2010

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

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Daily links for 03/04/2010

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

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Daily links for 03/03/2010

ibm system x

  • “IBM’s eX5 servers will come in blade and rackmount configurations, with the first ones being released later in March. IBM is taking the Intel architecture and adding a chip of IBM’s own design that reduces latency between memory and processors. IBM claims the new servers will improve database performance by a factor of 30 over current systems, while greatly improving performance-per-watt and virtual server density.”

    tags: ibm, server, ex5

  • “IBM on Tuesday introduced a new server technology it says will dramatically increase performance and cut computing costs for businesses that run their applications and storage on industry-standard, Intel-based servers.
    Big Blue’s eX5 chipset, announced at the CeBIT industry conference in Hannover, Germany, promises to reduce the number of servers required for a given workload by 50%, cut storage costs by 97%, and lower licensing fees by half, according to the company.”

    tags: ex5, ibm, server

  • “We also applaud IBM’s aggressiveness in announced the new System x lineup ahead of the official launch of Intel and AMD’s new processors. The usual routine calls for the server vendors to wait for these components to be announced in order to avoid pre-empting details of these new parts. IBM deftly sidestepped this concern opening a window in the press just for itself.

    Welcome back System x.”

    tags: ibm, server, system-x, ex5

  • “There’s departure from the scene will mean that the environment for immersive 3D social virtual worlds, already increasingly barren, will now be even more so. But perhaps because it chose a different financial model, privately-held Second Life publisher Linden Lab has managed to stay ahead of the recession and is said to be profitable.”

    tags: virtual-world, there.com

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

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Daily links for 03/02/2010

trout

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Daily links for 03/01/2010

  • “Now, I am a virtual world person, obviously. I don’t see much distinction between the game worlds and the non-game ones like Second Life. I have been working with them since the text muds, for over 15 years, which doesn’t exactly put me in the true old dino category where Richard Bartle and Randy Farmer reside, but I think it is fair to say that I have been closely identified with the space for a long long time now.
    And I think that they aren’t over, but the form that they have taken is.”

    tags: virtual-world, second-life

  • “Can’t wait for Oscar night? I know I can’t. So here at Hypergrid Business we’re doling out our own awards. First, a little video introduction. This is a little sailboat trip that opensim’s own Bri Hasp took across a few virtual worlds. Yes, it is now possible to sail a boat from one virtual world to another without logging in again.”

    tags: opensim, open-source, virtual-world

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

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Monthly disclaimer

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent my employer’s positions, strategies or opinions, especially if they are about the guitar, fishing, gardening, carpentry, house painting, and musical tastes.

Blog entries before 2010 are in my Archived Blog.

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Daily links for 02/28/2010

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

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Post mortem on the 2009 vegetable garden

vegetable garden in snow

Last year I blogged about the vegetable garden I put in and my trials and tribulations in protecting it from critters. Today my garden looks like what’s shown in the photo on the right. I live and garden in the northwest corner of New York State in the United States.

Therefore, I thought it would be a good time to review what I did right and wrong last year as I start to think about my 2010 vegetable garden.

Last year was the first year in about eight that I decided to put in a vegetable garden. In the past I have gardened quite a bit, but I had not made the time to continue it from year to year. Also, we have a particularly obnoxious bush-like weed that spreads via thick, deep underground roots, so it’s a battle all season long to help the vegetables win. I was pretty successful in this this last year, but it was a lot of work.

Location

As I just mentioned, that weed is very hardy and persistent. If I keep the garden where it is now, I may rent a small backhoe to dig down and pull up all the roots. One key reason to move the garden is to get it away from the black walnut trees that ring the property and are near the driveway. The part of the garden that is toward the front of the photo is just over the drip line for a black walnut and so only certain plants will grow there.

If I move the garden, it will be a lot further back in the property and centered in a grassy area. However, it will be very difficult to water and I’ll need to rely on rainfall for the most part.

That brings me to …

The Fence

The fence I installed did a good job keeping out the deer, especially once I extended it by a couple of feet around the corn. The deer just nibbled on the corn over the top of the fence until I added two more feet of fence.

The right side of the garden was entirely in sunflowers and corn:

Lemon Queen Sunflower Sundance Sweet Corn Sugar Dots Sweet Corn Peaches and Cream Sweet Corn Garden Cross Bantam Sweet Corn Velvet Queen Sunflower

From left to right, the corn moved from earlier to later varieties for harvesting. Probably 40% of the entire garden was planted in corn. It looked pretty promising.

We didn’t get one ear of it. The raccoons ate it all, though they didn’t bother anything else.

This next year I’m not going to bother with corn at all. To keep out the raccoons I would either have to install an electric fence or completely enclose (encage?) the garden, sides and top. I’m not going to do that. So next year I’ll have more room for vegetable and maybe try something new, like pumpkins.

Peppers, Tomatoes, and Basil

The peppers I planted in the ground were fantastic, though those I put in a container did not do well. This year I’ll be expanding the group to more varieties and only put them in the ground.

While we did get some tomatoes, it’s clear they were affected by the blight. I needed to get a replacement tomato plant and I picked up one from a home center on a whim, and I think that infected the rest of the crop.

The basil crop was strong, though late in arriving. This year I plan to start many of my plants directly from seed. They’ll need to get going around April 1, so I’ll have more on that as I get closer. I’ve ordered several packets from some catalog sources, and I’ll go through how I’ll make my final choices.

Squash and Cucumbers

The Garden Spineless F1 Hybrid Zucchini Squash grew well (too well), and produced a large crop. I need to stagger the planting of the seeds this year to not get inundated with zucchini. This is an old joke, but we were indeed told when we moved to this village that people locked their cars in summer so that others would not put zucchini in them.

The Summer Pac F1 Hybrid Calabaza Yellow Squash was a disappointment because it was more of a gourd than a yellow zucchini. I blame myself and will need to do more research this year.

The Marketmore Cucumbers produced a good crop and didn’t overwhelm us with volume. I grew many of them up the trellis I used earlier in the season for the snow peas, and that sort of worked. This next year I may build a wood ladder for them.

Beans and Peas

Both the Tender Green Improved Bush Beans and the Yellow Kinghorn Wax Bush Beans did very well, however they were too crowded. I fell victim to the urge to over plant too many vegetables in too small a space. This year I’ll either have more room because I’m not doing corn, or I’ll be in a larger space in a different location.

For peas I went with the sugar snap variety. We got a few, but I put them in too late. I should have started them around May 1, or even late April, but it was closer to the end of May by the time the garden was in shape. My mother always told me to get them in on St. Patrick’s Day, but around here the ground is still frozen and we’re likely to get more snow, so that’s not going to work.

Lettuce and Carrots

I got a lot of lettuce but should have staggered the crop. The carrots grew very slowly and we didn’t get to harvest very many. Next year I need to explicitly amend the soil where I plant the carrots with a lot of sand.

Summary

The major lessons in my return to vegetable gardening were:

  • If the deer don’t get you, the raccoons will. Watch about for ground hogs as well.
  • Your fence can never be too tall.
  • Plant half the vegetables you want to plant in the space you have available.

Sources and Books

In a previous blog entry I gave some good sources for vegetable seeds. If you want to go organic, pay very close attention to the seed descriptions or else go with an all-organic provider like High Mowing Organic Seeds. Rob Weir also posted a good blog entry with ten seed providers for New England gardeners.

There are hundreds of books about vegetable gardening, some of which are specialized to specific parts of the US or the world. Here are some that I’ve found to be quite good:

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Daily links for 02/27/2010

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Daily links for 02/26/2010

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

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The 6th International Conference on Open Source Systems, May 30 to June 2

OSS 2010, the 6th International Conference on Open Source Systems, will take place on the campus of the University of Notre Dame, South Bend, Indiana, USA, from May 30 to June 2.

From the conference website:

Over the past decade, the Open Source Software (OSS) phenomenon has had a global impact on the way organisations and individuals create, distribute, acquire and use software and software-based services. OSS has challenged the conventional wisdom of the software engineering and software business communities, has been instrumental for educators and researchers, and has become an important aspect of e-government and information society initiatives. OSS is a complex phenomenon and requires a interdisciplinary understanding of its engineering, technical, economic, legal and socio-cultural dynamics. The goal of OSS 2010, the first IFIP WG 2.13 conference to be held in North America, is to provide an international forum where a diverse community of professionals from academia, industry and public administration can come together to share research findings and practical experiences.

Evidently I am on the Program Committee.

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