Sidebar Clobbered
Yesterday I experimented briefly with a new theme for my site. Unfortunately it clobbered my sidebar, and when I restored my usual theme most of the widgets there were destroyed.
I’ve managed to resurrect the ones that were most important to me, but caching issues may cause your sidebar to look wonky for a while. Depending on your browser you may or may not have a keystroke combination available to you to force-reload my site and ignore any bits left in your cache. All browsers (I believe) provide a menu option to clear browsing data, which is more drastic, but would clear your cache.
As for the theme, it’s been deleted from my server, never to return again.
The Perfect Bag
I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with computer bags. Well, perhaps like/dislike is a more accurate phrase. I like which ever new bag I’ve just heard about, until I acquire one and then I start to dislike it.
My most recent bag is a BBP Hybrid Hampton, and while it’s a fine piece of computer luggage I’m afraid it just isn’t for me.
The BBP is convertible though a unique strap arrangement that allows you to wear it as either a backpack or as a messenger style bag. I tend to keep mine in backpack mode even though the conversion process is relative quick and easy. In backpack mode the straps aren’t long enough to fit comfortably - I find that they bind a bit under my arms. And, with reduced mobility in my right arm, I find it difficult to get the bag off, especially when I’m wearing a winter coat.
The strap isn’t the biggest issue for me however, getting to any compartment that isn’t the laptop is. The laptop sleeve is the only compartment that is accessible without undoing two large snap buckles and then flipping up the cover/flap. The cover/flap has three smallish pockets, one of which is open to the top allowing it to conveniently empty itself whenever you flip the cover over to access any of the interior pockets.
The sleeve itself is only just big enough for my laptop. I have the medium size bag and a 15" MacBook Pro. If the zipper is even one tooth from being fully open I can’t get the laptop into or out of the sleeve. With the recent acquisition of an iPad through work I now have two devices to carry each day, and this bag just isn’t right for the job. I can fit the iPad in it’s Apple sleeve in the same pocket as my laptop, but I fear both are squeezed a bit as a result.
The bag I had previous to the BBP was a Targus backpack that worked well enough, but as it aged it tended to sag and fall over when set down. The BBP also can’t stand on its own, always falling toward its front necessitating that I lean it against a wall or desk when I put it on the floor.
In lieu of getting yet another bag, I’ve decided to resurrect and older messenger style bag I’ve got, a Contour one from Kensington. The original shoulder strap on it separated, but I’ve got a “spare” strap from a still older messenger style bag that will suffice. My walking commute is only a few dozen paces so carrying the bag at my side isn’t a burden. The Kensington has more, large, externally accessible pockets than the BBP, and plenty of room inside for both the MacBook Pro and the iPad.
If I were to spend some money on yet another computer bag, I think it would be one of the newer, sleek backpack style ones - something as small as possible that could still carry both devices. Time to do some research.
Inguinal Nerve
Many, many years ago, when I was serious about bicycling and rode year round, I rarely had trouble with my inquinal nerve getting pinched. Today, however, during my trainer ride in the garage I experienced numbness in my groin. It’s an odd sensation, not one I really recommend, and I hope that minor adjustments to my bicycle’s geometry can address it.
What is counter-intuitive about the adjustments is raising the nose of the saddle to force the “sitz” bones back onto the wider part of the seat. The setup on my road bike hasn’t changed in years, I’m afraid it’s the rider whose geometry has, ah, shifted. If I’m not able to eliminate the numbness on my own, I may return to the bike store and see what adjustments they would recommend. There are some in the medical field who report that prolonged interference with either the nerves or blood vessels involved may cause medical issues - I’d rather skip that if at all possible.
Prior to getting the trainer I was curious how my elbow would react to the stresses of stationary riding. Turns out it handles that far better than it does riding on the road. On the road it acts as a shock absorber, constantly flexing and relaxing as I and the bicycle move. On the trainer it only has to support my weight, and then just when I lean forward. Hopefully it’ll become strengthened by the stationary riding making on-the-road riding less painful this summer.
Finally, I hope that short daily trainer sessions will toughen up my seat so that riding isn’t something to be endured. I know this will happen, I just hope it’s sooner rather than later.
Giant Auto II Magnetic Trainer
This morning, after taking my bicycle to the local independent bike shop to try out of couple of their trainers, I purchased a Giant Auto II magnetic trainer. I found it to be a tad quieter than the comparable CycleOps Fluid 2 trainer, and perhaps a tad easier to pedal. Although the pedaling resistance could have the roller being too tight against the rear wheel.
The trainer is dirt-simple to set up: You take it out of the box and unfold it. Getting the bike onto the trainer is only slightly more difficult; after some trial fittings and adjusting the spindle clamps, you are all set.
Once the bike is on the trainer the rear wheel is about three inches in the air, which means you “ride” downhill or at least at an uncomfortable angle, until you prop up the front wheel. All the trainer manufacturers make a nifty molded plastic wheel chock, but I opted to use four old boards for now. Since the bike is rigidly held into place the front wheel doesn’t move at all, so the boards will suffice.
After several minutes remember how to reset the odometer on my anging Cateye cycle computer (while not losing the all important wheel size), I was all set for my first training ride.
Five minutes later I was ready to stop. For now.
Not only am I out of aerobic shape, I have no real muscle tone, and most importantly, no callus for the hard little leather saddle on my road bike. I really used to ride a 100 miles on that thing? Seriously?
The trick now will be to gradually build up my endurance and overall conditioning. I don’t want to hurt myself or burn out so that I don’t keep this up. My self imposed goal is only 120 days away now, and I have 27 pounds yet to shed.
Barriers to Payment
In his seminal 1970 book, Up The Organization, Robert Townsend outlined many good ideas for how to better run a corporation. One that always stuck with me was his idea of calling yourself at work to see what barriers had been erected to prevent people from getting through.
In today’s Internet-driven economy new barriers exist that are every bit as difficult to surmount as an overly-protective secretary or administrative assistant was 40 years ago.
For example, as I am taking a class in the spring semester here, I need to pay my student fees. As a University employee I am eligible for tuition reimbursement so all that’s left for me to pay is $131.50.
For several months now I have been using Google Chrome exclusively as my browser, so when I see a blurb on the sign-in page about Safari users I ignore it. Once signed in the Student System I access the Student Center and then the outstanding payments section. It helpfully shows me an accounting of last semesters bill and payments. Clicking on the payments tab I finally see the $131.50 I owe.
Clicking the make payment button I am led to a page that lists the fee twice, so I click on the first one and get an option to add it to a shopping cart. I do that and next I click on checkout which results in an error page saying I am not authorized.
Huh?
Try all of that again with the same result.
Call the Help Desk and learn that neither Safari or Google Chrome work with this particular application. In 2011. Great. It’s not like the Internet is brand new, you’d think a major provider of student systems like PeopleSoft would know better.
The help desk solution is to, “Use Firefox or IE.” Not real happy about that as a solution, but okay. Download Firefox and access the Student System. Click randomly a few hundred times until I get past the checkout button and see a notice that payments cannot be made via Debit card, only Credit card or electronic check. Are you kidding me with this sh*t? Kill the browser in disgust.
Via instant message chat I ask my wife, Sibylle, if she’ll hunt up a check book and give me the magic numbers from the bottom of a check so I can give the University money. In the meantime we have a nice chat about Bootstrap the cat and his favorite play toy, sunshine in the mornings, and how wonderful life is.
Happen to notice the Safari users notice again, and actually read it this time, before signing into the mess that is iSIS a second or third time today. It says that while you can’t directly access the payment section of the system, you can go to CashNet via this nifty link here. Why that wasn’t offered along with the “you aren’t authorized” error earlier I have no idea.
Using Google Chrome and the nifty CashNet link I set off to pay my bill. Hmm, I need to know my not-a-Social-Security-number identifier, called a WID (Wildcat ID). Fortunately I have this written down as it’s 9-digits and I don’t know it by heart. That and my last name get me it to the payment system. Of course this system doesn’t know what my bill is, so I have to manually enter the amount. And then the Routing number (twice) and the account number (just once) and my name, and my great-grand-aunt’s maiden name spelled backwards. Okay, maybe not that last bit.
Finally I press pay now and my bill has been paid.
I realize that people put up with this because they have to pay their tuition and fees, but that’s no excuse for the incredibly cumbersome process implemented here.
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Limiting people to specific browsers was a bad idea in the 1990s, doing it now is just stupid.
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Not accepting a perfectly reasonable method of payment is also stupid. What if I don’t have a checking account or credit card? It is possible in this day and age to have your employer pay you via what amounts to a debit card - how do those people take classes?
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Using a third-party site to actually collect the funds is fine, but throw some branding on there to assure me that I am send money to the University and not some guy in Kenya.
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Get off my lawn.
Passcode
A couple of weeks ago I received an iPad through work. Yesterday, while at lunch with my wife, it occurred to me that should I lose the iPad, or have it stolen, whomever had it would be able to send and receive emails as me, would have access to my bookmarked web sites - and be able to masquerade as me on those where the browser knows my password.
I’d seen articles about the somewhat visceral reaction people had when loaning their iPhone or iPad to a friend, as the loaner realizes the loanee is now in control of a large slice of their digital persona. So far I have loaned my iPad to no one nor have I passed around my Android phone. But with today’s realization, I am now setting a passcode for both devices.
As more of us have “smart” devices that allow us to interact with the digital universe there will be increased need for a simple, direct way to authenticate our self to our device(s). Perhaps a biometric fingerprint scanner or voice print scan. The current crop of pin number or connect-the-dots-in-a-pattern methods work but they are an extra step that must be taken each time you turn on the device. A method that authenticated you when you picked the device up, and locked the device when you set it down would be ideal.
I Want to Ride My Bicycle
With the goal of getting into better shape and losing some weight set for this winter and spring I need an activity (that I’ll stick to) to burn some calories. My plan is to get a stationary trainer, hook up one of my bikes, and pedal away some pounds.
Turns out there are at least three categories of trainers: the old squirrel-cage fan jobs, magnetic, and fluid. The squirrel-cage fan models use wind resistance to simulate riding. They tend to be noisy, and usually don’t provide a realistic resistance curve as you ride harder.
The magnetic models use a magnet incased in aluminum to provide resistance. Turns out that while aluminum isn’t ferrous it does react with a magnet when the magnet (or the aluminum) is moving. I don’t pretend to fully understand the physics involved, but I can accept that it works. The fluid models have an impeller immersed in fluid, and the faster you pedal more more resistance you feel.
Both the magnetic and fluid approaches produce a more realistic resistance curve; as you increase your pedaling speed the resistance increases as well. Plus they tend to be much quieter than the old wind-resistance models.
Presently I am leaning toward either a CycleOps Fluid 2 or a Giant Cyclotron Auto II trainer. The Giant is magnetic, and the CycleOps (as hinted at by its name) is fluid filled. The Giant is about $40 less expensive at $220 locally. Reading what reviews I can find online neither is a clear cut winner or loser. Given that I am woefully out of cycling (or any other kind) of shape, I’m sure that either trainer would suit my purposes.
If I can hold off on spending the money until the weekend, I may take my old Cannondale road bike into the store and ask to try both to see how they feel in action.
Mobile Passwords
In the more than thirty years I have been using computers I’ve had a lot of passwords. Some formed to very complex rules, others to very simplistic rules or no rules at all. Until very recently all my passwords were entered into the computer using a standard keyboard. Starting a year ago, however, with a chance to use Sibylle’s iPod Touch, I discovered that some of my password techniques were reliant upon the keyboard itself, and that mobile devices often take great liberties with the layout and availability of certain keys.
Over the summer I got my first smartphone, an Android-based HTC Droid Incredible, and in the last two weeks through work I have acquired an iPad. Both of these devices have touch keyboards as their primary input mechanisms and neither fully supports some of the password creation rules imposed by some of the systems I interact with.
Password Rules
For better or for worse most places requiring passwords today impose some set of rules designed to create passwords that are presumed to be harder to guess or otherwise “hack.” Mostly what these rules do is insure that people write their passwords down. A typical set of rules might look something like this:
Here’s how: just pick a starting key, say the 4-key, and a pattern, angle down to the left for four keys and then right for four more keys, and start with the first two keys shifted to get: $Rfvbnm,.
The problem as we’ll see in a moment is that entering this pattern on a touch keyboard is much more involved than on a traditional tactile keyboard.
Apple’s Touch Keyboards
The iPad (and iPod Touch, and I assume iPhone) has three keyboard layouts; what I will call the ABC-layout, the 123-layout, and the #+=-layout.
Using the example pattern described above, you’d have to change to the 123-layout to enter the $ and 4, then to the ABC-layout for the Rfvbnm (making sure to tap shift for the R), and finally back to the 123-layout for the ending comma. Ugh.
Android Default and Swype Keyboard Layouts
Android Default
The default Android touch keyboard takes a slightly different approach to things, putting two characters on each key and allowing you to “long press” a key to get the secondary symbol. There are three layouts: the ABC-layout, the Symbol-1-layout and the Symbol-2-layout.
Using my example password, $Rfvbnm, you would start with a long-press of the 4$ key to get the $ character, then tap the shift key to type the capital R, then the vbnm keys for the next four characters (taking care to note that the key layout is slightly skewed from the typical computer keyboard), and finally touching the comma key which is down next to the spacebar. Again, ugh.
Swype
There is a very intriguing alternative keyboard/input system for Android called Swype. With Swype you “draw” each word by sliding your finger from character to character. When you lift your finger, Swype starts a new word. I find this input method to be the fastest for entering text and really wish there was a similar option for Apple’s iOS platforms.
There are four Swype layouts: ABC-lowercase, ABC-uppercase, Symbol-lowercase, and Symbol-uppercase.
Even though drawing words is Swype’s forte, entering passwords doesn’t really lend itself to that input method, so you wind up tapping out individual characters when in Swype input mode. Using the example $Rfvbnm, password again, you’d long-press the S$ key, then touch shift R, then fvbnm, and finally the comma, down by the space bar. Once again, ugh.
It is worth noting that both the default Android input method and Swype offer voice-to-text input which works extremely well, and is useful for those surreptitious I’m-not-texting-while-driving-messages.
Password Managers
It is possible to get software like LastPass or 1Password that will remember all your passwords and that will work across all computing platforms (Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, iOS, and Android) but I haven’t made the leap to one of these tools yet. I do use a password database that lives on my primary computer to help me remember passwords, but I have to go there to look them up. A password manager would integrate with your browser(s) and automatically insert passwords as you needed, and offer to store new ones (or even generate extremely strong passwords for you). My hangup with these is learning to trust that my passwords are safely stored in “the cloud” somewhere and that I’m not going to be left high and dry should the company fold at some future date.
30 By Fifty
In January 2006 while visiting Ted in Massachusetts I stepped on a scale for the first time in years. I was more than a little disturbed to discovered I weighed 250 pounds. At 5’ 9" in height, 250 pounds is a lot of weight. My knees hurt most days, and I snored loudly.
In June that year I bought a scale, started tracking what I ate, and joined a kendo club near where I lived. By eliminating snacks and unnecessary calories from my diet, and vasting increasing my activity level I managed to lose 57 pounds over the next twelve months.
Since that time my weight has fluctuated, but steadily crept up. Today I weigh 208 pounds. I would like to weigh 180 pounds. The body mass index (flawed though it may be) says a male of my height should weight in the mid-160 range, but I think that may be a bit too thin for me.
The trick to losing weight that last time was simple: eat less, do more. For the most part my diet is pretty consistent. I do snack some now, and there is no doubt that I have some “extra” calories in my weekly intake I could eliminate. What I am missing is the activity. Kendo five years ago was done outside in rather extreme heat. I was losing an average of two pounds a week during June, July, and August while working out. Obviously my body responds to activity in a healthy way - the trick is finding a new activity that I’ll stick to and enjoy.
This year my goal is to lose the the pounds necessary to reach 180 as an average daily weight by my 50th birthday. That gives me just 124 days to lose 28.6 pounds (as of yesterday morning). That’s an average of one pound every four days. My knees, and fallen arch, won’t take to strenuous exercise without objecting painfully, so I am looking toward lower impact activities - specifically bicycling.
For most of the 1980s and early 1990s I was way into bicycling, averaging a couple thousands miles a year, and riding nearly every day of the year. Last spring Sibylle and I bought new bicycles and enjoyed evening or weekend rides around our neighborhood and I even rode to work several days. This year I want to ride seriously again, using the time between when I get home from work, around 4:45 pm, and when Sibylle is finished teaching for the day, around 7:30 pm, to ride.
Until the weather warms up I intend to use a stationary trainer in the garage to exercise. Once it is comfortable riding outdoors again, I’ll change to actual riding. I’ve never used a stationary trainer before, so I don’t know how boring or difficult it will be to stick to my plan; hopefully having a monitor with a DVD player hooked up and a stack of movies will help me to pass the time while peddling to nowhere.
And, hopefully, come this May 7th, I’ll weigh 180 pounds.
85
Over the course of the past 12 months I managed to read a total of eight-five books. I’m not sure what this says about me other than I am a voracious reader. I don’t know if I will keep score again this year or not, but it is tempting.
Using Amazon and their affiliate link program has netted me exactly no money, either no one visits me book page or if they do, they aren’t into the same books as me.
Maybe I should go back to putting the books on the main page as individual postings instead of burying them off on another page. But that would necessitate a redesign of the whole site I order to be aesthetically pleasing to me, so I don’t expect it will happen any time soon.