blueZhift Blog

A few days ago, I noticed in my emailed Facebook status update notifications, that I could now reply to them via email. That is, I could reply to a friend’s status update without having to go to and login to Facebook. I thought it was interesting, but could not see the immediate benefit to me. Nevertheless, I started using the new feature.

Later, after talking with someone about how Facebook has become a popular vector for PC viruses and how many companies are beginning to block Facebook access for workers, it struck me! Being able to reply to a status update or comment on one via email is a way to get around the block. Keeping people from sending email to certain addresses is a thornier issue than blocking access to a particular web site. And it is highly unlikely that mail from Facebook itself poses any kind of security threat. Still, people are supposed to be working, right? Facebook you are so cheeky!

In the wake of the failed Christmas day bombing attempt by a Nigerian man, there has been a renewed called for the expanded use of full body scanners at international airports. The Dutch have already announced they will use these scanners for all U.S. bound flights. And Nigerian officials have made a similar announcement. These millimeter-wave and backscatter X-ray scanners essentially strip away clothing to reveal things that may be hidden underneath. Privacy advocates have likened their use to virtual strip searching and have strongly resisted their deployment in the United States.

I think it’s high time for Americans to get over their problems with the nude human body. Not a single one of us came into this world with a stitch of clothing on. Do I really need to care that some TSA staffer I don’t know will see me naked in some scanner? No I don’t! Department store changing rooms have been monitored for years to prevent the far less than fatal crime of shoplifting.

There’s nothing shameful or offensive about the naked body. But I do take offense at the twisted, charred, and often naked, corpses in the aftermath of a successful airliner bombing.

While I might complain about Yahoo!’s new home page, on the whole, they’re still a good portal. Just ran across an AP article there that speculates free over the air broadcasting could come to an end due to shrinking advertising revenue.

It’s no secret that the television viewing audience has a lot of choices now as to how, where, and when they get programs to watch. I haven’t paid much attention to over the air network shows for a long time now. Part of that is because the shows I like the most aren’t on the networks anyway. And even many of the cable shows I follow can be downloaded legally or otherwise at relatively low cost. If free TV disappears, I’ll hardly notice or care. And if some of the shows I do care about go away, well, that happens. I’ll watch something else or read some books. Or, hey, maybe I’ll make my own entertainment and share it on the web.

There’s no such thing as a free lunch. The entertainment industry seems to be undergoing a long overdue correction. For one thing, the television rating system has never been exact meaning that advertisers were probably overpaying in a lot of cases. Actual viewer counts can be much more precise for a web delivered show than anything broadcast. And the ads themselves can be much better targeted. So it’s no wonder the ad dollars are flowing in the web’s general direction now. In the end, the huge media conglomerates are either going to have to learn to live with smaller profits or bring something new to the table that their customers want.

I know I probably should address this to Yahoo! directly, and I probably will once I figure out how. But for now I just wanted to register my disapproval of the new Yahoo! home page. It’s really not all bad, but those left side panel mouse over pop up/slide out boxes are the most annoying web page feature I’ve seen in a long time!

Every time I hit the Yahoo page, I invariably get the annoying pop up/slide out box on my way to something else. Mouse over actions beyond simple tool tips are IMHO, a bad idea. People will always trigger these without wanting to and sooner or later they start to stay away from your pages. As it is now, I dread visiting Yahoo because of this annoyance.

After finally getting 64 bit Windows 7 Ultimate running on my unibody MacBook under Bootcamp, the most vexing thing to deal with was nonfunctioning wireless. Being tethered to CAT-5 cabling when booted into Windows was a real pita. Googling turned up little help or clue to this until today. I found a forum post in which someone made it work by unpacking the BroadcomInstaller64 file from the OS X install DVD and running the installation from the local hard drive. This is essentially what needs to be done but leaves out a lot of details. So I’m writing up what worked for me.

1. Copy BroadcomInstaller64 from \Boot Camp\Drivers\Broadcom to the local hard drive somewhere like C:\Broadcom for example.
2. Use 7-Zip (or similar program) to extract the files in BroadcomInstaller64. Right click on the file, select 7-Zip, then Extract. I extracted these to a subdirectory called BroadcomInstaller64.
3. Open the Windows Control Panel, then open the Device Manager. Under Other Devices, right click on Network Controller. Then click Update Driver.
4. Click, Let me pick from a list of device drivers. Click on Network Adapters.
5. What you see here will vary. In my case I clicked on Broadcom and then chose one of the wireless card entries. I don’t think it matters which since we’re just going to select the drivers on the local hard disk.
6. Click on Have Disk and browse to where the unpacked drivers are located, in my case C:\Drivers\Broadcom\BroadcomInstaller64
7. Double click on the bcmwl6 setup file you’ll see listed.
8. From the list of adapters double click Broadcom 802.11 Multiband Network Adapter (there are also g and n listed)
9. Windows will warn you that the driver is not signed or something for compatibility. This, I think, is why the install fails when using the installer directly. Choose to install the driver anyway.
10. If all has gone well you should now be able to set up your wireless connection in the usual way.

So there it is, that’s what worked for me. And in fact, this blog post is being written on my Mac using that very same wireless connection enabled using the steps above. So far, I’ve had not troubles with it. So I hope this will be of some use to others who’ve had this problem.

Actually, I finally got around to putting together my traditional post convention slideshow last week, but I want to give the Wordpress 2.9 improved video embedding a little test. The slideshow is the first video I’ve made on my Mac using iMovie. iMovie is okay, if you haven’t used other, more conventional, video editors. But I found it a bit confusing at first and later too limiting. Still, for a simple slideshow, iMovie is fine. But I’ll be sticking to Sony Vegas 8 for my bigger projects. Yeah, it means booting Windows, but I’m not in the mood to spend a lot of money moving to a native Mac solution and having to learn a new tool. I still hope there will be a Mac OS X version of Sony Vegas some day.

Anyhow, here’s the slideshow!

Hmm, in the end I still had to put in the object code by hand to embed the video. Just putting in the link only gives a link… Well I’ll look into it some more later… Maybe it doesn’t like Chrome.

It suddenly occurred to me this morning that it is totally absurd for me to be parenting someone else while having so many unresolved issues of my own. Nevertheless, I suspect that is the situation with most parents… No wonder the birthrate is dropping more technologically advanced parts of the world.

Oh well, call me Captain Obvious.

A couple of days ago, I bought my first ebook. I bought Japanamerica: How Japanese Pop Culture Has Invaded the U.S.. I bought the Kindle version for my iPhone and so far, I’m pretty happy with it. As a life long book lover, I’m both pleased and surprised at how this came about.

Reading digital books was not the reason I got an iPhone. And while the Kindle, Nook, and other book readers are attractive, they just weren’t a top priority item for me. Digital books are a good idea and long overdue, especially for heavy laden school children, but I was in no rush to get there. But now that I’ve slipped in through the side door, I’m glad I came. The iPhone screen is pretty much perfect for the extremely casual sort of reading I would be doing on such a device and so far at least, I’m not seeing any downsides to this at all. Of course, that’s bad news for anyone trying to sell dedicated book readers, unless they get a lot less expensive.

I ended up buying a book because I was in an adventurous mood and decided to try out the Kindle reader for iPhone. I was hoping there would be some free books available like the Barnes and Noble Reader had. And I wanted to compare the two readers. There weren’t any free books, but there was a sample available of the Japanamerica book. So I downloaded that and started reading, got hooked on it and bought it. Ultimately, the content made the sale, and since I usually buy books from Amazon anyway, it was easy for me to buy one more.

I still like physical books, and have no plans to stop buying them, especially since some, like manga, wouldn’t be good on the iPhone’s screen. But from now one I’ll definitely be looking for a digital version.

I still can’t get over the feeling that time is running out. Of course, that’s probably because it’s true. There’s only a finite amount of time left in my sojourn on Earth and I have no idea just how much of it is left. I suspect that most people just ignore this and carry on, but I just keep having these feelings that I need to try new stuff before I run out of time.

Even though I believe that there is more than this life and that God has a purpose for all of this, I still want new experiences in the here and now. Is that bad? I’d like to think that this is all preparation for whatever role I may have in the next life. But I have no proof of that, and it seems likely that’s it’s all my own depraved thrill seeking.

Oh well, none of that changes the fact that the sands in my hour glass are running out. I don’t think my faith has been shaken, I just want to understand all of these feelings better.

A few days ago, I spent a couple of hours in Playstation Home on my PS3. I wanted to see what it would be like to watch and episode of Full Metal Alchemist in the theatre there. On that point, I was a bit disappointed because Playstation Home doesn’t have a proper first person view such as found in any FPS or MMORPG game. As a result, I had to watch looking over my own shoulder, only satisfying to the consumate narcissus!

Unfortunately, narcissism, mine at least, is a little hard to satisfy in Home because the avatars are just so darn creepy looking. Part of it is the design, which could be fixed if Sony would just rip off Square Enix’s beautiful Final Fantasy models. Right now, even Second Life avatars look better and at least in SL, the user can greatly improve this. The other part though is the way the avatars move and carry themselves. It’s just very unnatural and robotic, which is fine for robots, but not something that purports to represent humans. The Wii and Xbox Live avatars are much better in this respect.

Aesthetics aside, I decided to go to the mall and see what clothing I could find to dress up my little doll. Again I was disappointed. The store interface really leaves me flat, literally. You don’t enter a store when you walk in. Instead you go to a flat display of the items. The pictures representing the different clothes don’t do justice to them and to make things worse, if you select an item, only a small selection shows your avatar wearing it. Please Sony, just copy Xbox Live on this point! What self respecting female avatar can shop for clothes without trying them on?

In the end, I bought a few items before returning to my apartment. On my next foray I may play with the avatar editing tool some more before going out on a more general tour to try out a few mini-games.  I know Home is still in beta, but I would have hoped that the look would have improved by now.