Category Archives: Uncategorized
Twitter and LinkedIn. Or not.
I have to get this out of the way right in the beginning – I really dislike LinkedIn. I thought I disliked Facebook, but holy cow, it’s nothing compared to LinkedIn. A bunch of people who fancy themselves experts on all sorts of things when it’s painfully obvious they aren’t (UX Designers, I’m looking at you). There was a post just today ridiculing the use of Comic Sans, which is a nonsense issue that only the font nazis and snobby, holier-than-thou design pedants get worked up over. The picture itself is a textbook case of passive-aggressive.
It’s a sign about keeping a freakin’ door closed. Honestly, I would have been tempted to print a new sign, deliberately in Comic Sans, that said ‘Screw You.’ Seriously, reading through LinkedIn is one of the most painful experiences I have had, and I’ve had a kidney stone.
That being said, it has been useful as a networking tool and communication platform. I can’t deny its help in making professional contacts, its role in my most recent hire, and its validity as a way to maintain a professional presence on line – I don’t ever friend, or accept requests from, coworkers on Facebook for obvious reasons.
I don’t go on LinkedIn that much for all the aforementioned issues, and so many more, however after responding to a message I received there I decided I would add this website’s URL and Twitter account to my profile since I was already on the site. The URL was easy enough to add, but Twitter, well that was a different story.
In order to add it, I had to agree to the following screen:
Do what now?
Let’s think about this for a minute. It wants to read Tweets, which I’m not sure should be capitalized, from my timeline. I assume it means my Twitter timeline, for posting on my LinkedIn timeline. I think it does. I’m honestly not sure.
Then comes this doozy – see who you follow, and follow new people. Now just hold on a minute – is it saying it will automatically follow new people? I can’t believe it would do that, but there it is. What if I don’t want to follow those new people? Will it guess? I have so many questions.
Next, it says it will update my profile? On its own? How? Why? With what? I shudder to think.
And then, at last, the final nail in the Twitter / LinkedIn coffin, ‘Post tweets for you.’ I assume this means it will post your LinkedIn posts to Twitter, but it doesn’t say that. I don’t deal in innuendo, or suggestion, or reading between the lines, I (normally) take what is written or said at face value. If I have to deduce or infer meaning then I will err on the side of caution, in this case clicking ‘Cancel.’
It’s very possible these are all innocent, standard Twitter behaviors. Posts on this blog are posted to my Twitter automatically, and again, I expect that’s what’s happening here. But Twitter needs to really clarify what they’re saying; it was bad enough being on LinkedIn, I didn’t need this as well.
Just a quick post about EULAs
This isn’t going to be one of my typically lengthy and insightful posts about End User License Agreements (EULAs), how no one reads them, or how they couldn’t make sense of them even if they did. If you’re not aware, EULAs are those things you have to agree to before you can use software or most websites.
No, I just wanted to share with you the EULA I was presented with by Panera Bread when I attempted to attach to their network using my phone. I’ve made a small gif. Enjoy!
(It kept reloading itself anyway, so I never was able to connect).
Panera EULA
Learn about PC and OS pioneer Gary Kildall, from the inside
In my classes and on this site, I talk a lot about history. To me, it isn’t possible to be genuinely good at something unless that skill is accompanied by a respectful understanding of what came before. Otherwise, how could true knowledge be claimed?
I hold that true for everything. For example, if one claims to be a guitar player but knows nothing about Les Paul or The Beatles, they’re not really a guitar player. They may play guitar, but guitar player they aren’t. Similarly, if one is a physician, but doesn’t know the groundwork laid by Louis Pasteur or Florence Nightingale or how they treated injuries during the Civil War, then I would question their qualifications and their true interest in the field; after all, if they don’t know the history of medicine, how interested in medicine could they really be? A true passion for something necessarily results in learning *about* that thing, and that includes history.
That’s why I talk about it so much. I’m always excited to learn a new little piece of computing history no matter how small; everything helps piece together the puzzle. It’s also why I’m a member of the Computer History Museum, and they recently released a heretofore unknown piece of history that is quite major. It’s the ‘first portion’ (about 78 pages) of an unpublished autobiography of one of the founders of the modern home-computing movement, Gary Kildall. You can read about it and download it here.
Gary Kildall developed the first true OS for what would become business and home computers, and he called it CP/M (Control Program for Microcomputers, and you can download the source code from the CHM here). There are many stories about him and his place in the early days of computing. The most common, the one his kids claim is false but has persevered and taken on a life of his own is that when IBM showed up at his front door to license his OS for use in their new line of PCs, he was out flying his plane and his lawyers advised him to not sign the NDA that was provided. IBM, not being a company to wait around, instead went right down the street to Microsoft and signed up with them instead. ironic, because they had approached Microsoft first who sent them to Kildall in the first place! Needless to say, the rest is history.
If you look at the screen of a PC running CP/M, you’ll notice that, and this isn’t a surprise, MS-DOS looks very much like it.
CP/M
The truth to that story has always been questioned, but it is generally accepted as what happened. Microsoft had no OS when IBM first approached, which is why they recommended Kildall. However when IBM returned to Microsoft after the failed meeting, Bill Gates jumped at the opportunity and it was all over for CP/M. Gates became the richest person on earth, and Gary Kildall, sadly, faded into comparative obscurity. The fact is, for all his contributions to computing, there just isn’t very much known about him as a person. Even finding a decent header image was difficult.
That’s why it was very surprising to see the Computer history Museum recently make available a copy of the autobiography. Apparently, he had written it sometime back in the 70s and handed a copy of it out to a few friends and family noting it was intended to be published the following year. Needless to say that never happened, and the fact it existed remained a buried treasure ever since.
Being written by his own hand, and talking about the events behind the urban legend of IBM, Kildall, and Gates, it is a really fascinating read, giving insights into how things worked back at the dawn of the personal computer age. I found it especially interesting that even though he had once created a BASIC compiler, he – in his own words – detested BASIC. I didn’t know it was possible to feel that way about a computer language, but apparently he did. I was also struck that in the introduction to the memoir, Kildall’s children mention their father’s later struggle with alcoholism, and apparently that manifested in the writings and is the reason that those sections of the writings were not included in the release.
I am more than ok with that, though. What has been provided in this first portion is a fascinating narrative and perspective, one not seen before, into the mind of someone who deserves much more credit than he gets.
A couple of side notes: You can see Gary in many episode of The Computer Chronicles, an 80’s – 90’s show about technology that is a really interesting and compelling look into the what consumer technology used to be, and if you haven’t been to the website of the Computer History Museum, you really should give it a look. There is so much there to see; it’s incredibly informative.
It’s all gone
(UPDATE: Many more pictures of the collection itself and some additional narrative can be seen at this Imgur post)
Actually, it’s not really gone, it’s just gone to a better place. It was finally time. I have donated my entire 40+ year collection of video games, consoles, manuals, displays, advertising and other miscellany to the Transformative Game Lab in the Department of Informatics at The University of California, Irvine.
I had been thinking about what to do with it all for a number of years. I have been collecting these things for decades, and while I love them all, most of the collection has been sitting in a garage in Las Vegas for the past six or so years, baking summer after summer in the brutal Vegas heat.
I wanted it all to go somewhere where it would be of benefit and use. Somewhere where it would be appreciated, where the games would be played and the manuals read, where they would be studied and researched as the works of art they are. I had thought about willing them to the Strong Museum of Play in Rochester NY, however the problem there is I would have to be dead to see my dream realized.
While I was thinking about it, I took a position in UCI’s Department of Informatics, where I learned quickly they do games research, they have a game lab, and most importantly of all, they consider it a valid field of study and give it the respect it deserves. I spoke with Joshua Tanenbaum, the professor who heads it all up, and serendipitously it turned out he was looking to expand the lab into retro gaming! An earlier attempt at getting an eBay seller to donate his collection hadn’t worked out, and although my collection was nowhere near what that seller had, we both knew this would still work out perfectly.
It wasn’t easy. My collection is big and random. It didn’t lend itself to easy packing and storing. Having sat in the garage all these years, it was also covered in a layer of dust, not to mention spider webs, dead bugs, and other detritus that is unpleasant to say the least. Having lived in Vegas for so long cleaning it up wasn’t a problem, but it was a big part of the project. Not to make anyone uncomfortable, but here is a picture of one of the webs when I first opened the garage door. You can also see in the background how disorganized it all is. Under that is a (poor iPhone) pic from the other end. It’s the loosest, most disorganized collection you can imagine.
Webs
Garage View
Even my beloved Genesis Collective went into the donation. I was surprised to receive some backlash from friends and family over that, and resistance to it. I didn’t realize how important it was to not just me, but others as well. Although it may seem counter-intuitive, that reinforced my belief I was doing the right thing, that they held meaning and importance and needed to be somewhere they were appreciated.
Also, meet Walter.
The Genesis Collective
As is true of any collector, however, I had some duplicates, and it turned out my friend only wanted Aladdin anyway, so I have already restarted the collection and they got what they really wanted. Win-win!
Rebirth!
There was much more than that, of course, so here are some non-exhaustive pictures of the other fun stuff that was donated. From the top: Sega Dreamcast (and some PS2) games, Sega Master System/Jaguar/Atari 5200/Sega Game Gear titles, Nintendo Virtual Boys (also notice the adults-only Mystique titles for the Atari 2600 on that lower right-hand shelf), and PC games.
A lot of Dreamcast, a little PS2
Master System, Jaguar, Game Gear, 5200
Virtual Boys
Can’t forget the PC!
It took days to get it all packed up. And when it was, it was just as chaotic as before. There was simply no way to organize everything into a cohesive package, and I gave up on the idea pretty early in the process.
Here’s how it looked when all packed and ready for loading into the U-haul.
Garage
Hall
There’s a lot there. The next step was to finally load it all into the U-haul. My dad flew in from Central California to help, and my dear friend Shauna even pitched in.
Progress
Some boxes, my dad, and the arcade machines
It was so hot on loading day (105 degrees, which for Vegas is actually considered a cooldown) that when the truck was finally loaded with boxes and other fun stuff, we had to leave the door propped open or it would have roasted the contents beyond repair. We left it open for about 4 hours, until around 7, until it was cool enough to finally close it up.
Because of the heat
The next morning at 6am, we were off.
It’s a long, mostly uneventful drive through the desert and down the 15 until you hit SoCal, but I like the desert and its vast open plains. We saw the massive reflector fields, formally known as the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, near Primm, and this picture is only one of them. They’re an impressive thing to see!
Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System
And to be fair, when you’re driving through the desert, EVERY road is a ghost town.
It sure is
We arrived at UCI around 11:45, and began the unloading process. Josh Tanenbaum, who I introduced earlier as the main man doing game studies in the department was there, as well as just-hired Aaron Trammell and others who agreed to pitch in. While it took three and a half hours hours in the blazing heat to load the truck in Vegas, with the help of 10 people it took about ninety minutes in not-too-bad heat to unload, and that even means carrying everything – including three arcade machines – to the sixth floor and through a labyrinthine maze of doors and halls to get to their final resting place. Well, it’s not actually their final resting place, but they’ll all be here for a while until we find them a permanent home in the building. Thanks to Josh for providing these pictures, as I was too exhausted and excited and neglected to take any!
The first is the truck right before unloading, the second and third are a couple of celebratory poses after a job well done, and the rest are some pictures of the room after it was all loaded.
The truck before unloading
Finally done
Cheer!
Storage Room
Storage room
Storage Room
To say it’s bittersweet is an understatement. I have carried some of these items with me for what seems like my whole life, having received them as birthday or holiday gifts when I was still in the single digits. I distinctly recall the specific moment when I acquired many of these things, whether it was the subpar Fighting Masters for the Genesis I picked up at the Annapolis Mall in Maryland or the Genesis collection I found in a flea market in Edmonton, Canada; Adventure for the Atari 2600 I received for my Bar Mitzvah at 13 or the ColecoVision controllers I had to wade through a warehouse in a seedy part of Baltimore to find. The Atari Lynx games I’d buy at the very same Toys ‘r’ Us at which I worked or first discovering the original GameBoy, each one carries significant memories with it, and it’s all a major part of my life. I did not give it up lightly.
I by no means have lost interest in the hobby, I’m still very much interested and very much vested, however changes have occurred both within and without the industry that moved me in this direction, however those are issues for another post. I would just like to say PC Master Race. PC MASTER RACE! Also, Steam, GOG, and emulation (don’t judge!).
I kept a couple of things. A Dreamcast VMU that has a fully unlocked Hydro Thunder Save, The World of Warcraft server (Bloodscalp) I used to play on, a soundtrack for the PlayStation title Road Rash: Jailbreak that my band was featured on, and the promotional Christmas Nights Into Dreams for the Sega Saturn. But everything else went in the truck.
At the same time, I have no regrets and had no hesitations. Where the collection is now is where it belongs – with people who will truly appreciate it, where it will be treated with dignity and respect, where it will be used and enjoyed. It wasn’t right to keep it in the garage for years on end, and although they’re just inanimate objects, well, I think they’re happier here, and we all are, too.
As the collection is inventoried and catalogued, as a final location for its display and use is selected and brought online, as the catalog and apps and everything else are created, and as any other milestones are reached, I’ll post updates. I’m excited for the future of it all.
It’s the end of Motorola
The new year has already begun and a well-known name in technology and communication is being – to use a computer science term – deprecated. Yes, the stalwart Motorola brand is being phased out in the consumer sphere, and will instead be replaced with the brand name “Moto.” That’s a term that has been used in the Motorola world for a while, but at the same time Motorola is the company that developed the first cellular phone known as the DynaTAC. The man in the header image is Martin Cooper, who developed the phone and made the first wireless call all the way back in 1977 using that phone, which was then released in 1983. Here’s a pic, and keep in mind it retailed for $4,000.
The Motorola DynaTAC
This particular phone is also notable from a historical perspective because prototypes were developed as early as 1973, it had to be bulky to incorporate the technology available at the time, and a version of this phone was released all the way up until the late ’90s!
Motorola continued innovating in the Cel Phone space, even maintaining the ‘TAC’ suffix (which makes sense as it’s actually an acronym for Total Area Coverage), with the much smaller flip-phone StarTAC, the phone that rendered the DynaTAC obsolete.
Motorola StarTAC
Motorola also had the “Hello Moto” jingle. let’s not forget that. Listen to its glory:
It always hurts a little when such an important name or brand in technology fades into the fog of history. I understand it, but the names have meaning. The Motorola name will live on in a corporate capacity, but like so many well-known names before it, as a brand it is time to move on. It will be Moto for high-end devices from now on, and we’ll see if that is enough to keep the brand going.
I am Oculus Rift ready
For the first time in I don’t know how long, I am not attending the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas as I am busy with classes at UC Irvine. I must admit, I’m envious of those who are there, getting to see things like the LG curved, two-sided display panels and the Farady Future 1,000 hp electric car.
As was the case with several recent CESs, a big draw is virtual reality. That is the technology I’ve gone the most berserk over as my previous post indicated, and the new advancements – including redesigned controllers and a front facing camera – in my VR platform of choice, the HTC Vive, are giving me very high hopes. If I could go into hibernation until it arrived, I would.
That being said, industry leader Oculus has made their VR headset, the Rift, available for pre-order at $599. This led to some negative reaction, as there was a belief the consumer-grade version of the Rift would be around the $350 – $400 price point, based on comments made by CEO Palmer Lucky.
I didn’t order one as I’m holding out for the Vive, but we all know early tech is expensive. Plus, the Rift comes with some peripherals including an Xbox One controller and remote, and is packed in a nifty carrying case.
Image Credit: Ars Technica
In addition to the headset, you’ll need a pretty decent PC in order to power the dual displays and motion tracking required. Palmer Luckily, Oculus provides a tool you can download (be sure to click the blue ‘download’ button, not the black ‘checkout’ button! Unless you want to order a Rift. In that case, click anything you want) that will test your machine and see if it passes muster for providing a VR experience. It checks memory, GPU, processor, etc. and provides details about each.
And I’m ready! Thank you Oculus for letting me know the Vive will work perfectly!
You can get additional details about each component tested
10,000 words
I have been hearing the rumors that Twitter wants to increase the number of characters one can tweet from 140 to 10,000. It would only show the first 140, allowing a reader to expand the entire tweet.
In case you’re interested, 10,000 words is about 40 pages, so 10,000 characters would be perhaps 10 pages. That depends on a lot, though, including the types of words, lengths, narrative structure (2 people talking in brief responses, for example).
Regardless, I always appreciated the 140 character limit, because it forced people to be concise, terse, to get right to the point. People already use too many words to say very little. I fear it will get much worse if the rumors are true. Plus, the character limit led to some hilariously unfortunate tweets.
On the other hand, perhaps it will deal a blow to text speak, which was born out of the need for brevity in length-restricted communications. That would be nice.
I myself just started using Twitter a little while ago, and I find the process of constructing cogent, brief tweets that still get a point across to be challenging, and I always feel a sense of accomplishment when I do.
I wonder if they would have to change the name of the communication. 10,000 charcters is hardly a tweet. More like a squawk, a word I didn’t know how to spell until right now. Or perhaps a caw. Maybe a murder?
This should be fun.
Some rare music news, and troll insurance
Happy new year! I spent it back home in Vegas with some of my former colleagues from UNLV, which was very nice, however there were some very sad musical moments as I attended Motley Crue’s last concert ever in Vegas, which was fantastic, but overwhelmingly bittersweet as three days later, on New Year’s Eve, they would play their last concert ever. I grew up with them, having first seen them in 1982, then again at the US Festival in 1983, and many more times during the last 37 years, as well as having many conversations, experiences, and memories that they were somehow involved in.
To see so many tattooed, leather-clad, long-haired heavy metal fans, myself included, have tears in their eyes as the band sang Home Sweet Home for the last time was a beautiful and impactful experience, one I will never forget and once again, a Crue-involved memory was etched into my brain.
But their show was absolutely fantastic, everything an arena show from a legendary rock band should be. Don’t believe it? Dig this:
Now this is a show
More sad news came with the death of the iconic and legendary Motorhead founder and frontman Lemmy Kilmister. Reaction from the pinnacles of rock and roll including Ozzy Osbourne, Alice Cooper, Gene Simmons, Metallica, and Dave Mustaine to name just a small few, show how impactful he was. As my dear friend and fellow heavy metal fanatic said, he lived the life of ten men and regretted none of it.
Lemmy; the man, the legend
But hey, if you’re not the consummate badass that is Lemmy, or the members of Motley Crue, that’s ok. If you think you may need some help when your feelings get hurt or counseling when someone calls you a bad name online, then your moment has come. The Chubb group is offering insurance against online trolls, and the very real problem of cyber-bullying.
They will cover expenses related to cyber-bullying and trolling, including therapy, relocation expenses, even PR reps to sanitize your reputation if it is sullied by others, all to the tune of (up to) $75,000. Its main audience is kids, however it will also protect against job loss as a result of online attacks.
I’m surprised it took this long. Online harassment and bullying can be a real problem reagrdless of my snarky comments above, and can lead to irreversible, serious consequences including suicide. Perhaps something like this will give people some hope and an avenue of help if harassment occurs.
Even so, I could also see it being abused. Real harassment, real abuse, can be devastating. On the other hand, some people are just thin skinned. What remains unclear is how to determine what is real harassment and what is the online equivalent of crying whiplash after a fender bender.
Some new equipment, and more thoughts about the future
As some of you may know, in August I took a position at the University of California, Irvine, in their Informatics department, which is in the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences. I’ve always been a big fan of that discipline as its multidisciplinary approach to technology provides great freedom and perspective when determine how it should be evaluated and studied. Of course, UCI is a great school as well, very distinguished, and everyone there has been quite wonderful, supportive, and accommodating.
Donald Bren Hall, housing, among others, the Informatics department
As was to be expected, however, I am also now incredibly busy. Last quarter (UCI works on quarters, not semesters), I taught Social Analysis of Computerization and Technical Writing, while next quarter I’m teaching the senior project capstone course which involves partnering with local companies, and a Human Computer Interaction course. The amount of preparation I’ve had to do for these courses can’t be overstated; it’s been nuts. I’m happy to be so busy, but at the same time I barely have time to do anything else.
Sadly, that included this website, my beloved IS301.com. I knew that it may wither and die like so many other sites whose owners abandoned them, that I simply wouldn’t have the time to maintain it and give it the proper amount of love and care with everything else I had to do, and for a good while that did turn out to be the case.
But then, I made a post. And another. Just a couple, not many, and the reason is that even though I was busy, I still thought about the site. I had put so much time and care and love and effort into it, I just couldn’t bring myself to let it die. It had its own Twitter feed, its own Pinterest board, extensive customizations and modifications I’d made over the years to make it exactly, or at least as close to exactly as I could get, how I wanted it. Those things may not be a big deal for other sites, but for a small, one-man operation like this, I’m pretty proud of what it’s become, especially considering its humble beginnings as a site on WordPress.com.
IS301.com’s humble beginnings
And that brings me to the crux of this post / video. One of the reasons I was hired at UCI was to teach a Human-Computer Interaction course in the new online Master’s program that will come on-line this spring. In order to do that, I will need to make some videos that provide lectures, demonstrations, tutorials, and so on. That requires video production software, so I invested in Camtasia for the Mac, which is more than adequate for my needs, and I also invested in a Blue Yeti microphone that will provide better sound for the recordings.
On a side note, the mic is a beast of a thing, you can see it there sitting on my desk, but it has a lot of functionality including various sound modes such as cardioid and omnidirectional, gain control, and it wasn’t too expensive all things considered (About $120 at Guitar Center).
Now THAT’S a mic!
I will primarily use these tools for the online course, of course, however since I have them, I thought I could use them as part of my repertoire to bring IS301 back to life. I’d like to make some videos including reviews, product unboxings, opinion pieces, that sort of thing, or whatever else strikes my fancy. I originally had a video accompanying this post, but after working on it for a couple of days it just didn’t add anything to the post; video needs compelling visuals, which the next one will have but this one didn’t. It was just a test anyway, an experiment to see how it went, and was essentially just a video version of the post itself. My intent is to move beyond that for future videos, but I didn’t want to go crazy for the first one.
(I did make the video tutorials explaining ripping dvds, Plex, and XBMC/Roku you see in the sidebar on the right-hand side of the page, but that was a jury-rigged setup, and I’d like a more professional setup for future endeavors).
In fact, I’m thinking that I’d like to invest a little more in the site; have a logo developed, an intro for these videos, perhaps some branding. Maybe I’m getting ahead of myself, but you never want to think small. Lately I’ve been feeling like there is some real potential here, I’m not sure what has gotten me fired up about it but here we are, and I already have the idea for my next video. When it comes to videos, it’s easier to write them first and then record them, however for the next video that might be more complicated than it sounds. Or it might not, I’ll just have to try it and see. This video
Additionally, I intend to keep IS301 as the site’s name. I like it; it’s mysterious and enigmatic. People will ponder “what does IS301 mean?” when it’s simply the class for which the site was originally designed. That’s all!
IS301.com today. But you know that, since you’re here!
I’ve always been very pleased with the way this site developed and evolved, and the simple fact is I don’t want it to languish in the island of misfit websites, abandoned by their owners. That happens to sites much bigger than this; you should visit hauntedmansion.com or doombuggies.com (they’re the same site but two separate URLs). It’s a great site, beautifully designed, a ton of content, some of which was contributed by people who worked on the design and production of the attraction itself. But it hasn’t been updated in at least five years from what I can tell, and there’s no indication of what happened. So I have to be sure that I’m focused.
Hauntedmansion.com
I’ll still be incredibly busy, especially with the graduate class on top of my regular teaching load, and I am the sole contributor and maintainer, so I’m being idealistic, but at the same time I’m pragmatic. I have high hopes that this will be a fulfilling side project that continues to grow and expand, in terms of visitors, in terms of content, in terms of quality. I hope you’ll come along with me; in the words of my financial accounting professor, that will make it so much more fun!
I’ll talk to you soon.
Multinational email unsubscribe extravaganza
In trying to unsubscribe to an email, and lodge a complaint, I visited so many countries!
See, I get a lot of spam for all sorts of things I would never use. Michael Kors shoes, Oakley glasses, Coach handbags, and the list goes on and on. I’m sure the products are quite wonderful, however I’m just not enough of a fashion statement to be interested in these things. Also, I’m a man.
While I was home for Thanksgiving recently, my brother told me that against his better judgement he clicked the unsubscribe link for an email (which normally just confirms an active email account), and to his surprise the emails went down.
So I thought I would run a little test. One of the other products I get spam about is something called ‘Uggs,’ which I believe are some kind of boot or something like that, I’m not really sure. Specifically, the email comes from ‘Uggs Australia.’ Apparently, if you read the small print, the fur in these comes only from animals originating in Australia. Or possibly the European Union. Maybe the United States.
