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.
No More iPad Envy
About two weeks ago, just prior to our move to the new house, I was issued a new 32GB WiFi iPad at work. I’ve wanted an iPad since they were first announced and was extremely pleased when my request for one was granted.
Due to our move, and to being off the last week of the year I haven’t really had a chance to use it at work. My hope is that I’ll carry only it to meetings, and that it will serve as my communications device, hosting my email, chat, and Twitter clients.
At home I’ve made great use of it on the couch and at the breakfast table. I find that I can type reasonably well on the touch keyboard, although I do find the auto-correct feature pesky at times.
However as wonderful a little device as it is, I think I would prefer an 11 or 13 inch MacBook Air if I were spending my own money. I miss the tactile feedback of a real keyboard, and the numerous keyboard shortcuts that I’m used to employing.
Just as I don’t want (nor could I stand) having a screen as small as the iPad’s as my primary screen, I don’t think I’d want a screen as small as 11 or 13 inches either. The primary use for an Air would be as a portable, take anywhere computer. I’d want to have a beefy laptop or iMac at home as my principle computer. Of course that would open up the whole synchronization can of worms - how do you keep your digital life in sync when you have multiple devices?
A rather nice first-world problem to have.
Re-immersion
From 1983 until mid-2004, or twenty-one years, I wrote code every day of my working life. When people asked what I did for a living my answer was always, “I’m a programmer.”
Starting in 2004 I worked on a large (very large) government project solely on design and architecture. We didn’t do any coding at all. When I left that engagement and moved on into the healthcare industry in 2007 I was once again in a position where I didn’t do any coding. And since arriving here at the University I haven’t done any coding.
Yet.
My position which initially started out focused more on procedure and process is now transitioning toward the technical. On at least one upcoming project I’ll be solely responsible for all the work, design, coding, and unit testing. Toward that end I have been re-immersing myself in programming.
I’ve decided to change IDEs from Eclipse to IntelliJ IDEA, simply because I haven’t used it before and because many (most) of the developer’s I work with do use it. I’ve been exploring our code base, and working with a new virtual environment which allows work against an application server configuration identical to what our production servers run.
My programming skills are a bit rusty, but like riding a bike you don’t really forget how. I’ve used a couple of tutorials to get my mental space back into programming, and I have setup all the computers I have daily access to with the same project directory space, and IDE configuration so that I can work from anywhere.
It feels good to be returning to my programming roots. My title may have changed, and my knowledge base is certainly much broader now that it was in 1977 when I wrote my first working programs, but I am still, proudly, a programmer.
Over the Gazelle.com Barrel
Recently we decided to try and sell an HD camcorder we own. The camera was easy enough to use, and took nice videos, but the AVCHD file format it used to store the images hasn’t yet been widely adopted and transferring video from the camera to Windows operating system personal computers proved to be time consuming and difficult. The promise of taking a video, uploading it to the laptop and then to YouTube wasn’t met and so we decided to sell the camera.
My first attempt was through craigslist. As always with craigslist, the majority of the responses were lowball offers or off the wall scams. The only legitimate response came from some on in Las Vegas - and I wasn’t interested in risking sending the camera away in hopes that their payment would be good.
Having recently heard ads for Gazelle.com on the MacBreak Weekly podcast I decided to give them a try. The idea behind Gazelle is simple - you fill out a form describing your device, they make an offer based on your description and if you like the offer they send you a box and a prepaid shipping label. You send the item, they inspect it and if it is what you said it was, you get your money. Sounded good, and the offer was very generous at $324.
The box came after about 5 days and I assembled it, put the camera and all it’s accessories into its original box and packed it neatly into their box. It was in the outgoing mail the same day. A few days later I got an email asking if I had return shipped the camera yet as Gazelle hadn’t yet received it. Finally on the 24th the status on my account page at Gazelle changed to show that they had received my camera and would soon inspect it.
Days passed and every time I checked the status the inspection still hadn’t happened. On Wednesday, 6 days after they had gotten the camera, I poked the “live chat” option on their web site and chatted with Mike005. Mike005 said that there was a backlog of inspections due to a large number of transactions, and that my inspection would happen the next day. Thursday afternoon I again checked my status only to find I was still awaiting inspection. I opened a another chat and was again connected with Mike005. What are the odds?
He again promised me an inspection before the end of the 7th day. Later Friday afternoon I got an email from Gazelle with the subject line “Status Update - Your Attention Needed .” Opening the email I was shocked and dismayed to read:
We discovered that the Camcorder you sent in is actually a different model. Because different models have distinct values, this affects the offer we can make.
Because of this, we had to adjust our offer to $123.00 for your Panasonic HDC-SD10 SD Full HD Camcorder . Not what I had hoped for at all. No details as to the model difference they claim they found. Just that what I sent them wasn’t what I had said I would send them. And the offer is now roughly a third of what was initially made. I have 5 days (now 4) to accept or ask for my merchandise back.
The is free return shipping so there’s no cost to me, but I am now wary enough of them to wonder if I’ll get my camera back and in what condition. And, getting back means I am back to square one trying to sell it. Accepting their offer feels like giving in and letting them dictate to me. Having tried to sell it on my own unsuccessfully I now feel like I am trapped over the Gazelle barrel.
The live chat - seemingly the only way to contact them - isn’t open again until Monday morning. I’ll have just 2 days left to accept their paltry offer or ask for my camera back.
A House to Call Our Very Own
Sibylle and I are buying a house. What’s more, it is still under construction so we get to have some input into its creation and shaping. This is exciting, thrilling, stressful, joyous, exhausting, and altogether splendid. We’ve started writing about the whole process over on our WordPress.com site.
To Tip or Not To Tip
Yesterday evening, as I was waiting for carry out from the Chinese dive next to campus I tweeted this question:
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The majority of responses indicated that people tip for carry out at those establishments where they would tip for dine in service, and they do not tip at places were they wouldn’t after eating there.
So, places like Applebee’s or Olive Garden where you would tip after a meal, most people would tip for carry out. Typically at those kinds of restaurants carry out orders are handled by one of the people working the bar. The bartender does some of the activities of the server - they place the order with the kitchen, assemble a salad if there is one to be made, gather the times and bag them, and deliver them to the customer. They don’t have to follow up on the meal since that occurs away from the restaurant. For that reason some of the people who responded to my tweet said they tip a bit less for carry out than for dine in.
Last night’s carry out was from a place where I would likely not tip. There is no table service, you order at the counter and either help yourself to the buffet or wait for your food to be prepared and carry it to your table. But the next time we get carry out from Applebee’s or the area Thai restaurant I’ll probably tack on a small tip.