Category: Technology

Morning Grind #10

Lorin Olsen


From the heartland, here are your morning bits and bytes…

  1. I am now fully immersed in the most recent grid computing initiatives. I ran a couple of work units for the Folding@Homefolks at Stanford. This is a very cool project that is performing distributed calculations to determine protein folding characteristics associated with key protein sequences. The folks at Standford are looking at solving sequences associated with key diseases – such as Alzheimer’s disease. The project is worth your consideration. But for me, I will not be spending a lot of cycles on this project. Simply put, the computing engine is one-dimensional. That is, it supports this one project. Consequently, I am focusing more attention (and resources) on the more generalized computing frameworks. I currently am running both the World Community Grid and the BOINC framework.The World Community Grid is a project sponsored by IBM and United Devices. It is a generalized grid framework which can be used for a variety of scientific tasks. Currently, it supports just one task: the analysis of human proteome folding. This project differs from Folding@Home in that the Human Proteome project is focusing on the science of protein folding and not the assessment of specific diseases.
    As noted previously, I am really excited about the BOINC framework. First, it is generalized tool that can be used for any number of projects. Second, it has more than one project in flight at this time. Third, some of these projects are immensely interesting to me. In particular, I love the fact that SETI@Home is running on the same framework that the modelers of the CERN LHC are using. Further, the WYP (World Year of Physics) team is using this framework for its Einstein@Home project. Einstein@Home is being used to interpret laser interferometry data in an effort to detect gravitational waves.
  2. I forgot just how geeky I am. As noted above, I am fascinated by the LHC and what it will mean in our efforts to understand our universe. And I have used “LHC” as a Technorati tag. By looking at the results of that tag, I found a whole bunch of links to bright (and quirky) young minds. One link pointed me to a website where atomic decay models are compared to dating models. The most frightening part about seeing this link is that I understood what this young man meant!
  3. Broadband convergence is great – and it’s hell as well. Cindy and I have one provider for cable television, broadband internet access and VOIP. The convergence is great because I have one bill. And it will be great when converged features start to emerge (e.g., interactive TV linked to broadband, callerid on the TV, etc). But it is hellacious when we have a cable outage. This morning, a series of thunderstorms took out the cable head-end in the neighborhood. Consequently, we lost voice, data and video. Of course, my heart was pumping and my kidneys still cleaned my blood. But my wife and kids almost seemed forlorn at the challenges. I should have told them to think of it as urban camping. Oh well. Things are back to normal. And I’ll have to think about how we can minimize the impact of these kinds of events.
  4. My son amazes me – and frightens me. He really likes hard rock. And he likes seventies music. Last night, we listened to some Eric Clapton (Cream) and some Jimi Hendirx. My sone really likes Jimi. And he likes Van Halen as well. It was really odd listening to Van Halen’s “Dream” with my teenage son as I remember seeing the video when I was a teenager. Wow! I’m getting older (and grayer). But it is great to talk with your kids about insanely simple stuff. Sometimes, we get too wrapped up in the urgent/important stuff that we forget about simple and “unimportant” things. I hope that my son will think of me as someone he can approach whether the issue is cataclysmic or commonplace.
  5. There are still some problems with current Deer Park nightlies and Blogger. Today, the items under MG#10-1 were poorly aligned (i.e., they didn’t flow around the embedded graphics). I’m sure it will be fixed soon. I love working with nightly builds. You see the development process in all its amazing beauty. 😉

That’s all for now. It’s off to meetings for me.
-CyclingRoo-

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CERN: The Center of the Universe?

Lorin Olsen

In late September, I’ll be giving a presentation on grid computing for the Kansas City Computer measurement Group (KCCMG). And since I am responsible for getting speakers to this year’s event, I thought I’d do the intro presentation. I’ll do this for several reasons. First, I’ll get to define terms and set the tone for the conference. Second, as the kickoff, I won’t have to be an undeniable subject matter expert.
So I’ve been putting some stuff together concerning various forms of grid computing. Moreover, I have been putting together some history concerning peer-based computing and its development over the years. So one of the key historical points I was going to highlight was the development of the SETI@Home project. I had spent many thousands of computer hours trying to perform all the fast Fourier transforms required to find E.T. And after a few years of spending lots of idle cycles, I finally stopped keeping up with the project. BTW, I’m not a wacko nut-job. I truly loved the notion of taking “leftover” computer cycles and putting them to good use. And as a sci-fi junkie, this was a diverting application of a fascinating principle.
Since SETI@Home was an early (and successful) form of a scavenging grid, I thought it deserved a slide or two. At the same time, I figured I could always get a laugh or two out of the crowd. So I went to the Berkeley site where SETA@Home used to reside. And I found the new Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC). Not only did BOINC support the ongoing work of the Planetary Society (the SETI folks), but they also developed an open framework that would support any number of distributed computing projects.
And what a cool selection of projects they support. I won’t go through all of them. But three really caught my fancy – and the cycles of a number of machines I administer. These projects include: climatepredictions.net (a global climate prediction tool), Einstein@Home (an applicaion to detect pulsars through the theoretical gravitational waves that Einstein postulated, and LHC@Home (a quantitative tool that performs offline calculations for the Large Hadron Collider at CERN).
While in college, I became infatuated with particle physics – or at least as infatuated as an Economics student can get. Consequently, the use of ‘spare” computer cycles to support the collision of hadrons (e.g., protons) really sparked my long-dormant physics curiosity. And while I am sure that I will speak further of the LHC (and BOINC), I was struck by the realization that CERN has always been at the center of computing innovation.
In 1980, Tim Berners-Lee worked as a consultant at CERN. Then in 1990, he presented his seminal paper on information managemnt to his colleagues at CERN. This paper helped to launch TBL’s (and CERN’s) development of HTTP (and httpd). For those unfamiliar with the history, the W3C has a great page with the historical highlights.
Well, CERN is at it again. CERN’s current support of an open grid infrastructure is testimony to their continuing commitment to the progress of the computing sciences. If you want to see some of CERN’s recent efforts concering grid computing, head on over to the GridCafe (http://gridcafe.web.cern.ch/gridcafe/). It’s a nice site about how The Grid is currently under development – and how it will impact our lives.
-CyclingRoo-

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Morning Grind #9

Lorin Olsen

Here are the early afternoon hits. Pardon the delay.

  • Asa hit the nail on the head. We don’t surf the http pages; we surf the web. We don’t RDP our systems; we remotely control them. Well, we digest feeds, not RSS. So the Microsoft name of “web feeds” does not bother me one bit – although I might prefer “net feeds” instead.
  • The latest Firefox nightly build corrected the Blogger create/post errors I noted yesterday.
  • The latest Firefox nightly has a few quirks. Greasemonkey no longer works. Argh!
  • I am psyched about the new company I am part of. We have some great opportunities in the market. And we have the people to conquer the challenges and seize the opportunities. I have only one thing to say – BRING IT ON!

-CyclingRoo-

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Blogger + Deer Park Nightlies = Almost There

Lorin Olsen

Hooray! After a few weeks of having challenges using Blogger with the Firefox Deer Park nightlies, things are now starting to improve. There are still a few challenges. For example, the “Edit HTML” tab is still not rendering properly in the Create/Edit post pages. But almost everything else is rendering properly. So I’m switching back to nightlies once again. W00t!
-CyclingRoo-

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Technorati To Be Sold?

Lorin Olsen

I just noted on BL Ochman’s “What’s Next” blog that Technorati may be “in play.” Scoble has also linked to BL’s entry and sent a query off to Dave Sifry. So time will tell. This could be simple speculation. Or it could be a way of boosting “buzz” before/during a transaction. Or it could be true. Actually, I would love to see Technorati’s approach incorporated into either Yahoo or Google. Either way, Technorati will once again be in the news. That will place tagging and folksonomies back onto center stage in tech news.
-CyclingRoo-

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Bandwidth Poaching in the Blogosphere

Lorin Olsen

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve started to add graphics to some of my posts. And, truth be told, I didn’t compose and/or “snap” most of the photos that I am embedding in my blog. During the Tour de France, I used some photos from CyclingNews (and tried to attribute and/or link back to the source). But I have always ensured that these pictures were stored on my blog server. This means that I reach my storage limit sooner. But it respects the bandwidth of the originator of the image.
Well, apparently there are folks that have chosen a different path. This morning, I was reading through Ed Morrissey’s blog (Captain’s Quarters) and read his recent post regarding the “suspect” posting practices over at Daily Kos. Apparently, one of the writers at Kos chose to embed a photo from a different source. But rather than copy the image to the Kos servers, the poster referenced the image on the originator’s server. And since Kos is pretty heavily read, the innocent orignator got hammered by unexpected bandwidth requirements. To demonstrate his displeasure, the orignator decided to modify the image and make some disparaging comments about Daily Kos and its bandwidth poaching.
While the story is slightly humorous, the bottom line is not. The blogosphere is composed of people and blogs of every size. And the largest of these blogs rely upon the smallest of the blogs – and vice-versa. It is a very interconnected world. Indeed, the blogosphere can be thought of as a new form of “the commons.” And we must respect “the commons” and everyone who uses them – regardless of readership size or influence. Barry Commoner (noted environmentalist) once said, “The first law of ecology is that everything is related to everything else.” And this is true of the blogosphere as much as it is for the ecosphere. And if we don’t respect one another, then we can really screw things up. So let’s ensure that we respect one another in all that we use and in all that we say.
But apart from the platitudes, there are some concrete takeways worth remembering. First, if you post images and can’t cover unexpected bandwidth costs, consider using an image hosting service – like Flikr. Second, always ensure that you respect copyright law when you use someone else’s images. Have I been a stickler for this? Probably not. Yes, I try and include the relevant attributions and copyright notices (as well as providing links, where appropriate). But have I actually obtained permission first? Not always.
But these are some of the reasons for using the Creative Commons approach for image inclusion and use. By using images covered under the terms of a CC license, you know that you have explicit permissions granted by the copyright holder. And you know this based solely upon the license terms the copyright holder has chosen.
-CyclingRoo-

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Blogger + Deer Park = A Shaky Marriage (for Now)

Lorin Olsen


I’ve been using the Deer Park nightly builds (i.e., Firefox 1.5) for several weeks. Up until recently, I’ve been thrilled by these builds. But in the past week, I’ve had to struggle with the nightlies and Blogger.
As the image (to the right) shows, the Create post form appears to be rendered wholly inappropriately. I am sure that this will get fixed quickly. But I guess it’s a minor inconvenience when you’re living on the edge.
In order to validate that it was a Deer Park issue, I started to use IE to post some of my recent thoughts. And IE rendered the Blogger pages quite accurately. But I can’t use the Technorati Tags for Greasemonkey that I am so fond of. Fortunately, I did run across a good Javascript/bookmarklet to use in its place. Improbulus has a great article on Blogger, Technorati tags and bookmarklets. It can be found on her blog (titled “A Consuming Experience”).
-CyclingRoo-

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MagicLine Is Magical

Lorin Olsen

Last week, Mark Pilgrim (the author of DiveIntoGreasemonkey) was working on a very cool new Greasemonkey script. But his work got overshadowed by some very messy security problems with Greasemonkey. Fortunately, most of those nasty security bugs have been swatted in the 0.5 release. So what was Mark going to unleash on the monkies among us? Well, it is called MagicLine. And it is very cool.
MagicLine reads autodiscoverable RSS and Atom feeds. When it is activated, (using Control + Shift + L), MagicLine greys the background text and display a search bar. From this search bar, you can type a search term whose results are displayed as you type. For example, if you look at my home page and then activate MagicLine, you can type in “Lance” and get all the recent posts on Lance Armstrong.
This tool is cool on many fronts. First, it is a great way to browse a blog. You can quickly filter through someone’s blog and find all the relevant posts on a particular subject – assuming the posting title is descriptive enough. Second, Mark has used a number of very cool visual effects. When MagicLine is activated, the background text gets greyed out. This is a simple touch that quickly shifts your focus from the page you’re viewing to the search task you will be performing. Second, the floating window for the search line is opaque and simple. You might be saying, “Yeah. Big deal.” But think about it. Mark could have gone for some eye-popping eye-candy, but he decided against it. That was a good decision. His interface is clean and simple, thus putting the emphasis on the function ahd not the form.
Mark has done a great job with this. Wander over and take a peek.
-CyclingRoo-

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Birthday iPod

Lorin Olsen


I have used an MP3 player on my computer ever since Justin Frankel released the first version of Winamp in 1997. Those early versions were great – and a little bit creepy. Justin had the habit of embedding bizarre, nearly occultic, messages and symbols in the About pages. But the software was innovative. And it allowed me to play with my CD collection in a whole new way.
And in 1998, my wife bought me my first portable MP3 player for Christmas. The device was a 128MB player from a company called Sensory Science. Amazon.com still has a link with a description of this ground-breaking device. I loved this thing. And I could take my music (or twelve to fifteen songs of it) anywhere I wanted to go. It was especially great in the gym. I could tune out everything while I lifted. So, for the past few years, I’ve ripped every CD that I own so I can load it onto a portable player. But in the meantime, technology has marched on.
Last year (in December) I started to listen to podcasts. I used either iPodder or Doppler as the feed aggregator. I used either iTunes or Windows Media Player as the MP3 player on my computer. My first podcast was the Daily Source Code with Adam Curry. After hearing his feed, I got hooked. As you know, I listen to dozens of podcasts – some on a more frequent basis than others. But the podcasts I listen to on a regular basis can be found on my home page.
Well, at Christmastime last year, my mother-in-law sent us “gift cards” in lieu of selecting a present, wrapping it and then mailing it to us. So I used my gift card to buy a new portable MP3 player – an Apple iPod Shuffle. I loved my RaveMP, but I needed a bit more space for storing podcasts. And I wanted to play around with an iPod. So a Shuffle made perfect sense.
And I have used my Shuffle and enjoyed it immensely. And Dana has enjoyed it as well. She has used it at basketball tournaments for the past four months.
But it does have some limits.

  • It does not store very many songs. Well, that’s not quite true. Compared to my RaveMP, it stores a ton more. My RaveMP would store about fifteen songs. And the Shuffle stores approximately one hundred and fifty songs. But this is only a fraction of my collection. Currently, I have over three thousand songs stored on my computer – all but three or four of these songs were ripped from my personal CD collection. So while the Shuffle stores a whole lot more than the RaveMP, it is still small – when compared to my complete collection.
  • The Shuffle is cumbersome to load up with songs. Yes, it is very easy to connect to my machine. But if you allow it to sync with your whole library, you get some interesting results. For example, I have Christmas music in my library. And I don’t want a random Christmas song thrown into a workout mix. So I’ve been syncing with a specific playlist. But that means that I have to keep this playlist up-to-date. So I spend time building different mixes for different listening venues. It’s lots of fun – but somewhat tedious to continue to maintain.

Nevertheless, the Shuffle has been a great addition to my musical life. But my wife has been watching me over the past few months. After watching me fiddle with podcast aggregators and diddle with players, my wife thought I’d love a full-blown iPod.
And she was right. I really think that the iPod is a sweet little gadget. Is it cool because it is new? Not at all. I’ve used digital music for eight years. I’ve had a portable player for seven years. And I’ve listened to podcasts for almost a full year. But the iPod (and iTunes) integrate all of these tools in a very simple and stylish package. In fact, it is fair to say that Apple did not create any of the technologies that make up the iPod. Even the shuttle wheel is not their innovation. It was developed by Synaptics (the makers of laptop touch pads). But Apple did design and engineer a sweet package. And they did develop an astounding brand identity.
But that almost sounds like what Microsoft has done with the Windows product and brand. Do I mean to say that Apple took a page out of Microsoft’s playbook? That’s exactly what I mean to say. If we set aside all the “evil empire” rhetoric, we need to realize that Microsoft is about design and engineering as much as it is about marketing polish. Both of these companies have synthesized ideas from multiple sources and created a compelling package that consumers are willing to spend their hard-earned dollars to use.
-CyclingRoo-

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