I went to a web services training class in San Francisco yesterday. It was sponsored by The Mind Electric, Droplets, and MEC. IBM allowed them to set it up at their offices at Market and Fremont.
Although I was impressed by TME's GLUE and by Droplets' eponymous software, a lot of things went wrong during the class. It was the first class they had put on together. Since IBM wasn't really involved in giving the class, no one there was prepared to handle a couple major facilities issues that came up. The biggest problem (warm sodas weren't exactly a show stopper) was that the room didn't have an Internet connection. None of the training rooms on that floor had connections. It appeared IBM was still having the 25th floor built out, but that was still kind of surprising.
The CEO from MEC was pretty technical. However, the key part of his presentation was to be a demo of connecting to the web services interfaces at Google and Amazon (GLUE) and putting a responsive, lightweight client UI on top of it (Droplets). He ended up trying to demonstrate a trivial web service from his laptop. He eventually got things working, although we had to break for ten minutes while he worked through a problem. He clearly hadn't planned for giving a locally hosted demo.
They all had made one of the key errors you should never make when giving a presentation or demo, especially away from your own office; they didn't prepare for anything to go wrong. While you can't reasonably prepare for everything that can go wrong, you should prepare for the most likely things to go wrong. If you have an external dependency like a network connection, you better have a backup plan. Even if IBM had a connection in that room, what if they had trouble getting an IP address from their DHCP server or what if the connection just happened to be down for that day (think SQL Slammer)?
I learned my lesson when I flew out to New Jersey to give a presentation. About two hours before the presentation was to start, I turned on my laptop. It wouldn't boot. Later, I learned the hard drive was toast and would never boot again. I didn't have the presentation on CD-R, CD-RW, floppy, or papyrus scroll. I had to call one of my colleagues (thanks, Keith!) back in California, tell him my network password, and get him to grab a couple-months-old backup and email it to one of the people where I was giving the presentation.
Anyway, GLUE and Droplets were pretty cool. I'll definitely download their software and check it out.
Linky land: GLUE and Droplets - TME Chief Architect Graham Glass's blog
I'm now well into the process of clearing up my credit record. This experience is supplying me with a lot of information on how to deal with identity theft efficiently once it has happened to you. I'll try to organize it in a reasonable fashion and add it to what I have already put together.
So far, I have filled out and returned 2 of the 8 affidavits. Some of them are simple one-pagers. Home Depot (card services actually handled by GE Capital Financial), however, wants me to fill out the four page standard FTC Identity Theft affidavit. That wouldn't be so bad if all the other companies accepted it, too.
I've always been very careful about giving out my Social Security Number, which appears to be the only thing this thief needed to open the eight accounts. I generally puch back unless I know the requesting company needs it to either do a credit check or file a document related to me with the IRS. Many companies ask for your SSN as a lazy way of getting a unique identifier for you. Puch back, and they will often admit they don't really need it.
As is almost always the case, it took longer than I expected, but I now have PhoneBlogger working with both Movable Type and Blogger blogs. Next on the list is Radio.
My work here is done. I am going to sleep.
I had to change the Movable Type pattern used to generate the filenames for individual archive files due to a current PhoneBlogger limitation.
PhoneBlogger currently uses boilerplate text for the title and entry text. The link to the audio file is the only unique text. Since the previous filename generator pattern I was using put all posts for one month in the same directory and then used only the title to generate the file name, that meant each new PhoneBlogger post in the same month would overwrite the previous one for that month. Bad. Stupid. Careless.
So, I changed the pattern to prefix the file name with the MovableType entry ID.
<$MTArchiveDate format="%Y/%m"$>/<$MTEntryID>_<$MTEntryTitle dirify="1"$>.html
My Welcome to PhoneBlogger post now has a new home just down the street from the old post. Of course, I left the old files in place. Fortunately, I don't think there will be too many bad consequences of the change, other than lots of old stories showing up again in my RSS feed and the URLs for my pages now rivaling the Iliad in length.
Some bum going by the name of Robert L. Stewart (that's not my middle initial) has stolen my identity. According to the Experian credit report I received today, since June of last year he has used four addresses in Tulsa, three addresses in Kansas City, and two addresses in Topeka to request credit accounts using my Social Security number.
Fortunately, I had very recently put together an information page on avoiding and minimizing the impact of identity theft and other information privacy and security related issues. I used that information to quickly add security alerts to my credit reports at all three major credit reporting agencies here in the US. When you have evidence of fraud, you get free credit reports (normally about $9 each) from each agency.
Experian said it would take 8-10 days for me to get the report, but they won the race by delivering it to me in just 4 days. Experian had a very convenient online form for adding the security alert and requesting a credit report. I had to use automated voice applications with TransUnion and Equifax. While I actually don't mind IVR (interactive voice response) applications at all, I still usually prefer online forms.
My knowledge of the theft started last week when I got a call from a collections agency customer service rep. Fortunately, he was just calling to let me know about four of the cases of fraudulent activity, but he needed to get a recording of me over the phone denying that I had opened those accounts. I'm thankful to his company for calling me, as I at least now have a chance to clear things up before it gets too bad. Hopefully, they will track the thief down and torture him with Mariah Carey recordings and white hot kebab skewers jammed into his torso. If he is convicted in Illinois, though, they probably will ban the use of the Mariah Carey recordings, so we'll just have to hope for the skewers.
Unfortunately, the four cases involving companies that that collections agency works for were just the beginning. Thanks to the thief, I have at least four more accounts that I have to get closed. Then, I have to work with all three credit reporting agencies to clean up my credit report.
I'm now the proud owner of the top link on Google for the search terms incinerator toilet. I thank each and every one of you who has searched on that phrase (or "incinerating toilet" or "Incinolet" or "toilet that incinerates") and then clicked through to read my story about the incinerating toilet at our cabin. Being a mover and shaker in the lofty realm of incinerating toilets has been a lifelong dream of mine, and I can hardly believe that it has finally happened (wipes tear from eye). Maybe it will all sink in after I get a cease and desist letter from Incinolet.
My main wish, though, is that I could get Google to drop the link to the story on my old weblog. Most people click that link, to no surprise, instead of the indented one that links to the story on this weblog. I recently replaced the story on my old weblog with a page that just redirects to the story on this blog.
In case you're curious about the world-wide demand for incinerator toilet info, I get an average of five visitors a day who follow a link to my site after searching on some form of incinerating toilet related criteria.
If you're interested in trying out PhoneBlogger, there are a couple options.
- I give you a guest account on my test blog
- I give you instructions for setting up your own PhoneBlogger installation
- I help you set up your own PhoneBlogger installation
If you just want to try out PhoneBlogger, but aren't sure you're ready to make the full commitment to installing a lot of software on your webserver, I would be glad to give you a guest account on my test blog. You can then phone blog to your mouth and ears' content.
If you want PhoneBlogger to work with your blog and you are a full on geek (or at least you're comfortable installing and configuring software on your webserver), I can send you the code and basic instructions for installing and configuring it. I only ask that you give me some feedback on the installation instructions so I can put together comprehensive documentation for others. Assuming there will be others. Must stay optimistic. I am aware that I am not offering a solution for world hunger.
If you want PhoneBlogger to work with your blog and are relatively serious about using it, but you aren't a full on geek, I would be glad to do a lot of the work to help you install it. I only ask that you be serious about using it, because I'll probably have to invest a bunch of time to get you up and running.
If one of these options interest you, please send me email.
Well, enough fooling around with development and alpha code. I now have a version of PhoneBlogger that is in good enough shape to demonstrate. Click on the "recorded message" link in my post before this one to hear it in action.
PhoneBlogger is an automated voice application. After asking you for info about which pre-configured blog you wish to post to, it records your audio message. Finally, it posts a blog entry that links to the recorded audio.
Moblogging, or mobile blogging, is a hot topic right now. While PhoneBlogger isn't as fancy as tools that let you post pictures from your camera phone to your weblog with text via email, it requires nothing more than an ordinary phone connection. A journalist could use it from a payphone (good luck finding one, though) or with a basic cellphone to immediately publish to the web from the scene of an unexpected event in progress. It's moblogging for the people, man. However, I would still love to have a camera phone set up to use Joi Ito's mail2entry Python script.
I have another webpage I am working on that will have more info about PhoneBlogger, in case you want to know more about it. I'm also planning to put the code up on a SourceForge project. For now, please email me at robert AT wombatnation DOT com to get a copy of the code.
This post was created with PhoneBlogger. Click to listen to the recorded message.
I purchased Fever Pitch on DVD for my wife for Xmas and we watched it this past weekend. Fever Pitch was originally released in the UK in 1996 or 97, but has been available in the States only for a few years.
Many of the people who reviewed the movie on Amazon were offended that the video cover (perhaps just for the VHS tape?) has a drawing or picture of a man staring at a topless woman who has strategically placed soccer boots hanging from her neck. The woman's face is obscured by the title. These reviewers compained that not only was the picture standard American sex-driven marketing dreck, but it was also irrelevant to what occurs in the movie. The picture they described is the same picture shown on the Amazon website for the DVD.
However, the cover photo on the DVD we received has a picture of Colin Firth yelling, presumably in support of Arsenal, and Ruth Gemmel in a short, slinky dress and high heels staring over her shoulder at him in contempt. The BlackStar website has a different composition of the photos with Gemmell on the far left and Firth on the far right.
Hmmm, is this a movie review or a video cover photo review? Anyway, Fever Pitch was quite entertaining as far as romantic comedies go, although I didn't like it nearly as much as the book. It must have been a real challenge for Nick Hornby to convert his book to a screenplay. Many of the details that I, as a soccer fan, found interesting and hilarious in the book would not translate easily to a movie.
Firth's character Paul, who is really a fictionalized version of Hornby, is a long-suffering supporter of Arsenal. If you're an American baseball fan, think Chicago Cubs or Boston Red Sox. Until recent years, Arsenal were mediocre for long stretches, punctuated on occasion by a frustratingly close brush with winning the league. In most soccer leagues, finishing first at the end of the season is considered to be the biggest prize.
Speaking of Hornby, that's supposedly him in an uncredited cameo as the coach of the school team that is getting skewered by Paul's team "8 nil ... or 9 nil" just after halftime.
If you're a fan of Nick Hornby's books, soccer/football, or Colin Firth, I definitely recommend that you watch this film. Unless you are only interested because of being a Colin Firth fan, I recommend even more highly that you read the book.
