Detachable Penis Publishing

Weird Internets

2012-01-27T15:00:00.002-06:00

January 23-27
Winner: Andrew

The Dope Zebra wins this week. I'll start posting the runner-ups too so you can see what lofty and difficult decisions we face each week.

Dope Zebra (Andrew)

Runner-Ups

Story (Jana)

My Vagina (Jana)

Stupid Hoe (Andrew)

Weird Internets, Jan 15-20

2012-01-20T10:16:00.000-06:00

Winner: Andrew

This is just too strange and/or awesome. Boob puppetry! Enjoy.

Weird Internets, Jan 9-13

2012-01-13T11:19:00.001-06:00

Pfff... I must have lost my mind with that voting thing. This isn't a democracy, weird internets of the week is 100% pure dictatorship.

All hail this week's winner - Jana! My Little Pony for Geeks

Weird Internets

2011-12-16T15:33:00.001-06:00

December 12-16
Winner: Andrew

Honorable Mentions:

and Little Rooster.com

Weird Internets

2011-12-11T20:17:00.001-06:00

Me and my coworker have been having a weekly contest for awhile of the weirdest thing we can find on the internet each week. I realized I should be showing the results so I'll post each week's winner here.

December 5-9
Winner: Jana

November 28-December 2
Winner: Andrew

Previous winners for dates I can't remember

Tips for Google+

2011-07-11T11:29:00.007-05:00

I've been answering a lot of Google+ questions and I wanted to write up some tips for friends. If you spot an inaccuracy let me know and I'll update this.

Circles:

If someone isn't in one of your circles they won't get any of your posts except posts marked Public or maybe Extended Circles (friends of friends).
Other people can add you to their circles and you'll get their posts under Incoming. They still won't get your posts until you add them to a circle and write to that circle.
You can add a specific person to any post the same way you set circles. Just start typing their name.
If you post to a single person (no circles) you're writing them a DM/Message/Email.
You can mention someone in a post by typing @TheirName or +TheirName. Using the @ will list people in your circles first, using + searches all of Google+.
Look for the +Person link in a gray box to make sure their name is linked correctly in the post.
If you do a @mention and that person isn't on Google+ yet it'll just enter their name (no link, no gray box).
You can have people in multiple circles.
Only people in the original circle you posted to can comment.
You can disable resharing and comments under the post's dropdown triangle.
If you add someone to your Blocked circle you become invisible to that person.

Photos:

You need to put the Google+ app on your Android phone to do Instant Uploads. Enable Instant Upload in the app's Settings.
Previous photos and movies on your phone won't be uploaded. Only new photos & movies.
All Instant Upload photos/movies go to a Private Picasa album only you can see.
Once enabled all photos/video you take on your phone from any app will be auto-uploaded.
Movies only auto-upload on a wifi connection (if they're longer than 10 seconds).
You can share any photos/movies by clicking the photo/movie icons at the bottom of the status update section in Google+.
The photo/movie buttons in the Google+ status update bar also let you upload from your computer, or attach Youtube videos.
Tagging someone in a photo notifies that person and adds them to the list of people that can see that album.
You can change which people/circles can view and comment on an album. Go to Photos>Your Albums>Visible To

Hangouts:

You can click video/audio on and off. You can still participate in the hangout without video/audio - there's a chat box alongside the video feeds.
Your video feed won't become the main feed (you won't be talking to yourself).
Whoever is speaking the loudest becomes the main feed.
You can click on/off any of the smaller video thumbnails to stick that person as the main feed.
When you initiate a hangout you can set what circles you want the hangout to be visible to. Only those people can see it and join.

Petition the Pulitzer be awarded to The Onion

2011-06-24T15:14:00.003-05:00

Visit AFAJP to sign the petition today.

To: Members of the 2011-2012 Pulitzer Prize Board
Columbia University
709 Journalism Building
2950 Broadway
New York, NY 10027

You Ignorant, Negligent Swine:

Since 1917, your increasingly out-of-touch organization of so-called cultural arbiters has been awarding the most distinguished prize in American journalism, and at no point in that nearly century-long span have your thick, prestige-addled skulls been penetrated by the notion that perhaps it might finally be time to recognize the publication universally acknowledged as America's Finest News Source.

From this, one can only assume that the members of the Pulitzer Board are either flagrantly in bed with the fat cats of Big Journalism, legally blind, hopelessly stupid, or some astoundingly irresponsible combination of all three.

That is why I, a concerned citizen, am joining fellow justice-seekers at the media watchdog group Americans for Fairness in Awarding Journalism Prizes (AFAJP) to demand that you and your ambitiously moronic cohorts finally award The Onion the Pulitzer Prize it so richly deserves. To be perfectly frank, the fact that this has not yet happened, and that a form letter such as this requires sending in the first place, is an embarrassment not only to you and your families, but to our entire American way of life, which to the best of my knowledge is supposed to stand for values such as honesty, truth, and the commendation of the most deserving.

Perhaps if you were somehow able to disengage your sniveling faces from the tight confines of The New York Times's ass long enough to wipe Thomas Friedman's overrated shit from your eyes and take a look around you, you'd see that The Onion is universally esteemed by everyone from the U.S. Senate to the common street vagabond as the single most reliable, trustworthy, and relevant newspaper in the United States today.

Regardless, this summer marks the publication of The Onion's 1,000th issue, and I believe it is high time you and your sick, allegedly on-the-take little cabal of excellence-rapers woke the hell up and faced reality. The Onion deserves one of your damned prizes way more than the simps you've been giving them to ever did, or ever will. How do I know this? Because I am astoundingly perceptive, moral, and intelligent.

What's in a name?

2011-06-20T13:00:00.005-05:00

I've had the username SOTA for around 16 years now. Most people first think it's for the ending of the state, MinneSOTA, but I'm much more of a geek than that. It's actually from a tabletop D&D'esqe game called Shadowrun. Me and some friends use to play online in a roleplaying MUD with our very first dialup net connections back in 1994. SOTA were optional game rules requiring players to pay out so much money each month to stay on top of their tech and maintain their lifesytle. Without it players could have some lucky runs and end up impossibly rich. It was a gold sink, and still seems fitting for my love of new technologies.

Tech doesn't stand still. The deck that cracked a mainframe wide open last month might not even get past the SAN today. To stay on the edge, a decker has to stay current with the "state-of-the-art," the SOTA. Selena must pay off a SOTA Factor of 61 to maintain her utility programs. Her deck has an MPCP Rating of 8, so she makes a Computer (8) Test. She acheives 2 successes, so she reduces the SOTA Factor by 6 x 2, 12 points. Her SOTA Factor is now 49.

Then there's the company name I borrowed. The second Mac I ever used was a friend's Mac SE, which was very similar to my Mac Plus, but was loaded with various games and applications because it had a whopping 40Mb hard drive. I borrowed several of the applications off that computer and noticed they had all been registered to this Detachable Penis Publishing. My friend is an english major, a music-lover, and has a ironic sense of humor. So I keep using the company name in hopes it turns up in amusing places.

Put a flag on it

2011-06-13T11:18:00.005-05:00

I feel like this should be some sort of milestone. My Google Map Maker edits #1973 & #1974 are for the entire Standish-Ericsson neighborhoods. If you glance around 38th St & Hiawatha or Raymond & University Ave where I work you'll see all sorts of new features added to Google Maps. Building outlines, parking lots, parks, all kinds of crazy things.

I've found that after the stuff I add is approved then it appears on the live Google Map about a day later, and on my Android phone in about a month.

I know I'm not perfect on every detail, and sometimes not completely consistent, but I do hope it gives more of a sense of place when folks see the map of my city. It's not just some dry run of grid streets and forgettable names, there's history here and all kinds of nooks & crannies you'd never know of flying through on I-94.

What we're all missing from the net

2011-06-10T14:17:00.003-05:00

For one day this week my home desktop machine wasn't going through NAT to get out to the net and back. My desktop computer had a real IP address and could be reached from any other machine or device in the world. When I looked up Google, or Facebook, or Youtube it was my computer talking directly to their server. My desktop computer could talk directly to my Android phone. Facebook could send things directly to my computer or phone if I wanted it to. No middleman. No client-server intermediate setup. No setting up port forwards.

Just direct routing, the way the internet was intended to be from the start.

We need more of that. And less of the broken, kludged system we're currently mistaking for the internet.

Happy IPv6 day!

http://arstechnica.com/web/news/2011/06/world-ipv6-day-went-mostly-smoothly-with-a-few-surprises.ars
http://news.opensuse.org/2011/06/09/world-ipv6-day-results/

Lessons of mass transit

2011-06-10T13:40:00.001-05:00

Lessons we're learning from mass transit is a short post of some of the life skills you can learn from being around humanity day to day.

Weighting Mistakes

2011-06-02T10:45:00.001-05:00

"In short, the “weighting mistake” says that prospective house-buyers are often enamored of a certain perk — say, an extra bedroom — even if it means they have to drive an extra hour to work each day. In reality, however, that additional bedroom only gets used a couple days a year, perhaps when the in-laws visit, whereas the commute occurs five days a week."

Recommended Android Apps

2011-05-13T13:25:00.000-05:00

Updated the list for Android 2.2 and the new T-Mobile G2 I'm using.

Screebl - Deactivates screen timeout when you hold the phone like you're reading it. You don't have to keep tapping the screen to keep the phone awake. Why is this not in the system prefs?

Launcher Pro - Customize everything about your homescreens. Change effects. Add/remove screens.

Pandora - Streaming music. Awesomesauce.

Seesmic - Twitter, Facebook, and Google Buzz client. Nice Android integration and lots of features.

Meridian - Slick and fast music and video player.

Aldiko - eBook reader. Reminds me of Delicious Library

Bump - Bump phones together to exchange contacts, photos, and apps.

Wapedia - Scaled down Wikipedia browser

Calorie Counter - Diet/Exercise/Weight tracker and can scan the barcode of what you're eating. Syncs with their website.

Movies - Find out what movies are playing nearby, theater times, buy tickets

Call Filter - Block unknown numbers, spam numbers, numbers not in contacts, or anybody else who you don't want calling.

Batteryminder - A small number that lives in your notification bar to tell you your current battery percentage.

Evernote - Take notes, audio, pictures and syncs them with your online account. Syncs with website.

Google Goggles - Take a picture of anything an Google will try to identify it. Works on barcodes, logos, books, artwork, text ocr, and more. Install Shopper to comparison shop identified items.

Google Reader - A functional RSS reader that syncs to your Reader feeds.

Doggcatcher - Pulls in audio & video podcasts and has tons of options.

Mint - Check all your finances on your phone. Syncs with mint.com.

My-Cast Weather - Lightweight weather info. Includes radar loop, outlook, bunch of stuff. And unlike the freebies (weatherbug, weather channel) it won't eat your battery.

SpotCycle - Shows you where all NiceRide bike kiosks are and their current status.

SportyPal - Maps your movement with GPS when your walking, biking, running, etc. Syncs with their website and lets you share workouts.

Xiialive - Shoutcast radio stations streaming to your phone.

Dropbox - Lets you access files added from your desktop machine, web, or phone. The modern floppy disk.

TuneSync - Synchronize playlists from iTunes to your phone automatically. No more mounting an SD card and manually copying files back and forth.

Anti-Rail Rep. Peggy Scott

2011-03-30T14:28:00.004-05:00

Below is Peggy Scott's (R-Andover) response on why she wants to cut rail transit funding.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Peggy Scott <rep.peggy.scott@house.mn>
Date: Wed, Mar 30, 2011 at 1:55 AM
Subject: Re: Cutting rail transit funding 55406
To: sota767

Dear Andrew,

Thank you for contacting me regarding rail transit funding. I
appreciate the opportunity to respond.

I wanted to provide you with some information that helps underscore my
disappointment with Minnesota’s rail transit system. Cost-benefit
analyses of these projects show that increases in rail transit mobility
do not translate to an increase in total mobility for the community. All
transit use currently makes up less than 2% of trips in the Twin Cities
metropolitan region. Rail transit is by far the most expensive mode of
transportation compared to more practical alternatives. The taxpayer
cost per trip for automobiles is measured in the pennies; the cost per
trip for a commuter rail is measured in the tens of dollars. The
taxpayer subsidy for a round trip on Hiawatha Light Rail is $7.90 out of
a total cost of $10.06. The taxpayer subsidy for a round trip on
Northstar Commuter Rail is $47.70 out of $54.72 total cost. Both of
these numbers include amortization of capital costs. In contrast, the
tax payer subsidy for a bus ride comes to a much more reasonable
$2.00-$2.50.

It remains unclear how much business growth has occurred around these
lines as a direct result of rail transit. I understand that some
businesses have opened in the Bloomington area. Key economic influences
in the area include the Mall of America and the airport; the Hiawatha
line remains just one of the many factors that could have contributed to
this growth. Economic development around the Hiawatha line has vastly
under-delivered compared to what was projected.

My current priority is to tackle our $5.1 billion state budget deficit,
and I do not feel that use of our limited resources on these projects
makes for a good return on our investment. Please note that I appreciate
and recognize your input on the merits of rail transit in Minnesota, but
I believe that the costs far outweigh the benefits.

Once again, thank you for contacting me. Please let me know if I can be
of further assistance to you on matters of state government.

My best,

Peggy

Representative Peggy Scott
District 49A
477 State Office Building
100 Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.
St. Paul, MN 55155
651-296-4231
Fax:
Email: Rep.peggy.scott@house.mn

Please sign up for my email updates at http://www.house.mn/49A

---------

>>> 3/16/2011 2:48 PM >>>
Please do not cut funding to the Hiawatha or Northstar lines. I use to
live in Coon Rapids and intentionally moved to Minneapolis 3 years ago
because of the lack of transit options in Anoka county. I use the
Hiawatha now every day to get to work, my parents use Northstar from
Ramsey to visit my home, and my in-laws use it to get from Big Lake to
the VA by the airport.

If Andover & Coon Rapids up-zoned the land around their stations they'd
see more dense growth, but right now the area around those stations are
just single-family acre lots. Ramsey has a much better TOD and they
don't even have a Northstar station yet. Elk River, Anoka, and Big Lake
are also better setup to utilize the stations than Andover.

Cutting funding to rail transit is a huge, shortsighted mistake. More
roads are not going to move commuters around Andover faster.

Andrew Balfour
Minneapolis MN

-----------

I disagree with her "pennies per taxpayer" cost of roads. I'd argue purchasing a car, insurance, taxes, fuel, and paying taxes on the roads makes car transportation more expensive, it just shifts the cost directly onto the user. I pay less to use rail, but a larger percent of my state taxes go to fund it making up the difference. But overall my fare+state taxes are much less than the cost of operating a car and paying for the road. I also don't believe she factored in the amortization cost of constructing or maintaining the roads but she used that in her rail calculation. Rail transit mobility does translate into more total mobility - you're adding more ways to get around! Would you like the 30,000 riders on Hiawatha LRT each day to clog up the roads instead? She also didn't include revenue lost to externalities like congestion which costs the state a ton of money each year.

And her business growth argument is junk. First the Hiawatha line is primarily through a residential part of the city. Houses within 6-blocks of a station are on the market an average of 1/3 the time houses located elsewhere in the city. From the 2010 census you can see every neighborhood with a rail stop has gained over 500+ people while other neighborhoods next to them have showed little growth or stayed flat. I would also argue that large projects like Target Field and the new VA in Ramsey are built where they are because of the availability of rail. With her criteria we should ask why every town along an interstate highway hasn't bloomed into a metropolis over the past 50 years.

Fundamentally I don't believe in cutting spending on basic services to balance a budget. You don't stop paying your mortgage when things get tight, you cut out fluff like movie rentals and dining out. Likewise you don't stop paying for roads, transit, police, fire, schools, and medical services that are fundamental to your community. You cut out fluff programs and you make sure everybody is paying a fair share in taxes - including wealthy individuals and companies that are increasingly paying less percentage-wise in taxes each year than the rest of us.

I suppose it's easy to complain about funding of mass transit when the community you represent has none. If I were an Andover resident I'd be more upset that there aren't any other options than driving.

The Grand Canyon

2011-02-23T23:26:00.002-06:00

I've been cheering for the WI unions for the past week hoping that their moronic gov will cave to popular sentiment. But a clip of the Daily Show got me thinking about the hypocrisy of cheering for one group of folks protesting the government (unions) while ridiculing another (teabaggers).

Focusing on just the financial aspect of these groups, at the core I believe they're both protesting in order to protect their incomes. It's their method for protecting that income that's different. The teabaggers want to pay less in taxes so that they get to keep more of their income. While the unions bargain collectively as a group to secure the best wages and benefits for their members.

I previously wrote how I don't believe trying to avoid paying your taxes, or less of your taxes, is fair at a societal level if you're still using the services the taxes go to. You may be trying to hang on to more of your income but I believe it's a greedy, self-centered, and short-sighted way to do so. Another interesting argument I recently read is how public workers bargaining with the government is essentially the government arguing with itself to pay itself more, at the expense of all the taxpayers. But behind these groups there's a really huge elephant that I don't think anybody is bringing up and that's what makes these groups so angry and passionate.

There is a massive income disparity in the United States and none of us are winning.

276 million Americans (the bottom 90%) have a yearly average family income of $31,000. While about 30,000 people (the top 0.01%) have a yearly average family income of $27,300,000. Average executive pay is now 185 times that of the average employee.

The distribution of wealth has become so unfair over the past 30 years that we are just fighting over crumbs, not even table scraps, of the rich. And the people we think of as rich aren't close either. They're just the butlers to the actual upper class of the country that has the real money.

Why are 0.01% of the ultra-rich getting huge tax breaks when unemployment is at a record high and people are losing their homes? How can a population be convinced that free healthcare would be terrible thing that they don't want? Why aren't we more angry that our yearly incomes are flat and what we do earn is worth less each year. Why are we losing services and being asked to pay more for what little is left?

The glaring realization is that our parents right now aren't better off financially then their parents were. And we won't be better off than our parents or grandparents at their age either if this pattern continues.

Freeloaders

2011-02-16T19:20:00.002-06:00

The Tea Party and the no-new-taxes Republicans are just a bunch of freeloaders.

I see photos of these people at rallies in Washington, or on the steps of a state capital, or on the sidewalk waving their signs about how this country is being sold down the river and they shouldn't have to pay taxes and I think: GTFO my sidewalk you lazy bastards.

My taxes paid for that sidewalk. Those capital steps. That park you're having your rally in. If you don't want to pay your taxes, if you don't want to pay for the benefits of civilization, fine. Move the hell out of my city and go live in the woods or on a mountain. If you're not paying your share of taxes like I am then you don't get to use my police, fire, streets, transit, garbage, water, sewer, parks, hospitals, schools, colleges, museums, bridges, stadiums, etc.

Go live in your shack in the woods. Shit in an outhouse. Gather wood for a fire, because you need to boil that stream water before you drink it. You'll get to keep all your money. Live the tax-free life. And if you freeze to death in the winter because nobody is around to help you - well at least you didn't have to pay taxes to the evil government.

I'm a moderate. I appreciate taking a hard look at the programs the government provides and making sure we're getting the best bang for our buck. If something's not working, or overrunning it's budget then you fix it or get rid of it. But I also believe in my responsibility to provide that buck. And in tough times, maybe two bucks if I can afford it and someone else can't. And in return I expect to live a long, happy, comfortable, hard-working life in a functioning society because me and the other people of my city/state/country have collectively shared our wealth to build a better place to live. And if other people from other places in the world want to come here and contribute the same then they're welcome to. That was what my ancestors did and it worked out for their children.

The rest of you who want all the benefits of civilization, but don't want to pay for it, can get the hell out. Go freeload somewhere else.

They're the same wretched taste

2011-02-08T22:35:00.003-06:00

So a month ago I signed up for the new Qwest 40Mbps/20Mbps DSL service when it became available in my area. It's based on VDSL2 instead of the older ADSL service Qwest has been selling since the 90s in the metro. Basically they run fiber to the little box at the end of the alley and your line distance is from your DSL modem to that box, whereas ADSL it's your DSL modem to the phone company local office. The speed is great, but unfortunately it's still run by the most incompetent phone company ever.

I said I'd give it a month. Installation was cake, they reconnected the line out on the pole and re-ran a few feet of phone wire and we were in business, the full 40Mbps/20Mbps connection. The junction box is about 150ft from my house so that helps a ton. The first thing my inner-geek demands is that I bridge the modem and have my D-Link DIR-825 do the PPPoE signon. That way there is only one NAT, I can setup my IPv6 tunnel, and fiddle with port forwarding and whatever other crazy network stuff I feel like without their Zyxel Q100 getting in the way.

So then comes problem #1. After 10/15/20 hours my connection speed plummets to around 5Mbps down, and 5-1Mbps up. No idea why. No errors on the DLink. Nothing. When I disconnect & reconnect PPPoE on the D-Link the speed comes back (and the IP address changes). But I'm not seeing a speed drop when the Zyxel Q100 does the PPPoE connection - it stays at full speed no matter what I throw at it.

That leads to problem #2. With the Zyxel doing PPPoE I have to DMZ everything back to the Dlink and I end up with a double NAT. I hate, *hate* double NATs. My whole frustrating experience with BHI was mostly due to dealing with IPsec VPNs failing across double NATs. You're trying to do some fancy encapsulated networking (VPN), encrypting it (IPsec), then rewriting each packet (NAT 1) and then doing it again (NAT 2) and if any of those parts hiccup or miss a beat the whole thing stops working.

This is also a big part of why the net over the cellular network still sucks too. The cellphone companies have very few real IPv4 addresses and end up single/double/triple NATing all their phones. Not so bad if you're only pulling down a web page or an email, but it makes 2-way connectivity with your phone a nightmare. Everything has to be done client/server (not device-to-device) where your phone talks out to a real server on the net and the server has to juggle everything and push data back to your phone, relying on your phone to keep the connection alive. Something like Qik where a phone should be connecting directly to another phone instead has to go all the way out to some server on the net first and then back down to the receiver.

Problem #3 then steps in. You can't setup a 6in4 IPv6 tunnel over a double NAT. It's temperamental as hell and runs into a lot of the same problems a regular VPN (it is basically a VPN) has with jumping double NATs. That's if the tunnel provider (tunnelbroker.net in this case) even lets you set it up, and they won't if you try to tell them your real IP is in private IP (192.168.x, etc) space.

Problem #4 is that Qwest support hasn't changed at all since I last tried them. I first asked about the speed issue and if they could check the PPPoE service, but the moment I mentioned bridged mode and my DLink the conversation ended with a 'it must be your router and it's unsupported'. It's a heavy duty router, and after skimming DLink's site I find that PPPoE with Qwest doesn't work for most people using DLink routers. But just Qwest - other ISPs doing PPPoE don't have a problem. Then again Qwest just switched to PPPoE a few years ago and prior to that they used PPPoA which nobody and nothing supported. Way to make your backend equipment standards based guys. For fun I also mentioned IPv6 and when they would have it available. I might as well asked in Greek. I think the lady thought I was talking about wireless on the DSL modem. Utter fail.

Problem #5 is I went to create my account on their website to pay my bill. Their website is so poorly done that when I could reach it (it's offline a lot for some reason) I could never create an account. I finally was able to get the 'right' code needed to create my account after a phone call, online chat, and another phone call. All to pay the bill online.

In the end Comcast may not be the fastest service but they're cheaper, they give me a real IP with DHCP, there's no NAT on their cable modem or network, they already are doing IPv6 trials, and their support people can be dicks but they're knowledgeable dicks. VDSL2 tech I believe is a huge improvement over ADSL, but in the end it's Qwest's decrepit backend services that make even shiny new tech look like shit. The phone company fails again.

TSA "Shame" Campaign

2010-11-19T04:13:00.005-06:00

Participate by repeating the word "Shame" out loud from the point where you enter airport security and have your boarding pass checked, to when you officially leave the security checkpoint. Pause whenever you wish, but keep repeating the word "Shame" as long as you can in security. No need to shout or yell, doing so may be regarded as threatening and cause you further delay. A regular speaking voice is fine.

This is a non-violent, non-confrontational, first amendment display of our displeasure at the new TSA body scanners and enhanced pat-down routine. As long as both of those procedures remain in use I encourage you to continue the "Shame" campaign.

Together we will make our voices heard and encourage other airline travelers to speak up and voice their objections when they otherwise may be afraid to do so. We are paying customers, taxpayers, American citizens, and human beings. We should not be sexually assaulted as a condition of air travel. This is going too far.

Thank you and please spread the word.

Skyways and Streetcars

2010-11-02T13:23:00.005-05:00

Minneapolis plans to reintroduce streetcars in some high-transit corridors downtown in the coming years. The first route sounds like it will be on Nicollet Mall and replace most of the buses crawling along the Mall. I like streetcars because I find them more comfortable than buses, and besides walking and biking I think they have the best "lets stop here and look around" appeal. You get a bit of that sensation taking the LRT through downtown now, but the LRT is still more geared for throughput. The streetcar is more of a moving sidewalk.

But I believe there's one obstacle to the streetcar really taking back off - our skyway system. The streetcar relies on people walking and biking around at street level, but most of the daily downtown population is up on the 2nd floor in the skyways. A lot of downtown streets, particularly Nicollet Mall, have very few storefronts that open onto the sidewalk itself. Instead you enter a plaza and hunt around for the business entrance. But the plazas make sense if you're already in the skyway.

There is a big disconnect. Out on the sidewalk you can use the streetcar, but the businesses you want to get to are locked away a story above your head. Right now trying to get from the sidewalk to the skyway can be daunting in itself. I think if it was easier to move from the sidewalk to the skyway and back it would help both areas.

How do we connect the sidewalk to the skyway?

Abogo Transportation Cost

2010-08-17T00:36:00.001-05:00

Abogo Transportation Cost is similar to walkscore.com but focuses on determining the price of transportation in an area by address.

USA Today looks at different transit options in the Twin Cities.

Record Store Cats

2010-08-15T17:01:00.002-05:00

These reminded me of Dave..

One year left

2010-07-13T18:46:00.004-05:00

Only a year of IPv4 addresses to go. Once they've all been handed out the IPv4 internet juggling act is going to kick into high gear. If you thought the net could be flakey today, just wait!

Android bluetooth earbuds

2010-07-13T14:19:00.004-05:00

Besides all the nice Android apps out there, the one thing I think is worth its weight in gold are my bluetooth stereo earbuds. The kind I own already have the earbuds attached, but you can purchase the adapter now to plug in any set of headphones you already have. These things are great with your phone. You can keep listening to music without have a cable tethered to your phone, so you can pull out your phone and use it whenever you like without untangling yourself. Makes the whole mobile setup much more convenient. And the bluetooth receiver also acts as a stereo headset for making and receiving phone calls (the music pauses during phone calls). An amazing device, totally worth it.

http://www.amazon.com/BH-214-Bluetooth-Headset-Detachable-Headphones/dp/B002NEMH6G/ref=pd_sim_e_6

Secret Sauce

2010-07-12T16:17:00.008-05:00

The Following Contains Really Boring Content, Only Useful For Me. Please Don't Read.

How I got my iMac onto IPv6 through HE Tunnel Broker's PPTP VPN.

1) Follow the PPTP VPN tunnel steps in HE's walkthrough to setup the tunnel.
2) Make sure 'VPN is Endpoint' is checked on HE's Tunnel page.
3) Configure the following script (ipv6script) to match HE's tunnel settings. Chmod 755 it when done.


#!/bin/bash
#######################################################################
# Update the HE (Hurricane Electric) ipv6-tunnel
#######################################################################
# Interface to use: en1 = Airport, en0 = Ethernet
MYIF="en0"

# leave as is
IPCACHE="/Library/Caches/ipv6scriptIP"

# Your Tunnel settings start here
# 1. get HEUSER hash from the website, "UserID". On main tunnel page.
# 2. get HEPASS hash: echo -n (Your HE Login Password)|md5
# 3. get HETUNNEL from the website, "Global Tunnel ID"
# 4. HETUNEND is "Server IPv4 address:"
# 5. HEYOUR6END is "Client IPv6 address:" without the trailing /64
# 6. HETHEIR6END is "Server IPv6 address:" without the trailing /64
# 7. HEPREFIX is the basic /64 allocation. Maybe /48 if you opt'd for that.
# 8. NEW_IP is "Client IPv4 address:"
# 9. HEMY64IP is an address from "Routed /64:". Easiest is to add a "1" to the end of the pool address. Remove the trailing /64.
# 10. LOCAL_IP is the same as NEW_IP. We're faking the 'dynamic' IP lookup code since we're in a tunnel.
# 11. Lastly, I redid the tunnel teardown/startup routine to match Mac OS 10.6's syntax - the original commands caused errors. Also set the sysctl values so your machine will forward IPv6 through the tunnel from other machines.

HEUSER=
HEPASS=
HETUNNEL=

HETUNEND=
HEYOUR6END=
HETHEIR6END=
HEPREFIX=64

NEW_IP=
LOCAL_IP=

HEMY64IP=2001:0123:123b:1234::1

#######################################################################
# Config end
#######################################################################
# sometimes this script will get executed twice at the same time, not good, so:
if [ -f $IPCACHE.lock ] ; then
echo A copy already running!
exit 0
else
touch $IPCACHE.lock
fi
# This is faster if your router sets a dyndns entry:
#NEW_IP=`dig mycomp.myvnc.com|grep "^mycomp"| grep -Eo "\<[[:digit:]]{1,3}(\.[[:digit:]]{1,3}){3}\>"`
#NEW_IP=`curl -s "http://www.networksecuritytoolkit.org/nst/cgi-bin/ip.cgi"`

# Wait for the network...
while [ ! -n "$NEW_IP" ]
do
sleep 10
#NEW_IP=`dig mycomp.myvnc.com|grep "^mycomp"| grep -Eo "\<[[:digit:]]{1,3}(\.[[:digit:]]{1,3}){3}\>"`
NEW_IP=`curl -s "http://www.networksecuritytoolkit.org/nst/cgi-bin/ip.cgi"`
done


OLD_IP=`cat $IPCACHE`
if [ "$NEW_IP" = "$OLD_IP" ] ; then
CURCONF=`ifconfig |grep $HETUNEND`
 if [ -n "$CURCONF" ] ; then
 echo Nothing to do
 rm $IPCACHE.lock
 exit 0
fi
fi

echo -n $NEW_IP > $IPCACHE

# if you need to use your public ip address, use LOCAL_IP=$NEW_IP instead
#LOCAL_IP=75.149.149.225

# let's delete a pre-existing gif0, ignore any errors
ifconfig gif0 deletetunnel
ifconfig gif0 down
ifconfig gif0 inet6 delete $HEYOUR6END
ifconfig en0 inet6 delete $HEMY64IP
route delete -inet6 default -interface gif0

# update the tunnel
#curl -k -s "https://ipv4.tunnelbroker.net/ipv4_end.php?ipv4b=$NEW_IP&pass=$HEPASS&user_id=$HEUSER&tunnel_id=$HETUNNEL"
#echo " "

sleep 1
sysctl -w net.inet6.ip6.forwarding=1
sysctl -w net.inet6.ip6.redirect=1
ifconfig gif0 tunnel $LOCAL_IP $HETUNEND
ifconfig gif0 inet6 $HEYOUR6END $HETHEIR6END prefixlen /$HEPREFIX
route -n add -inet6 default $HETHEIR6END
ifconfig en0 inet6 $HEMY64IP/64 alias

rm $IPCACHE.lock
exit 0

4) Setup the following .plist (net.pugio.myipv6script) in /Library/LaunchDaemons to run the script. Make sure it points to wherever you saved the 'ipv6script' file.


<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
        <key>Label</key>
        <string>net.pugio.myipv6script</string>
        <key>ProgramArguments</key>
        <array>
                <string>/Users/balfour/Documents/ipv6script</string>
        </array>
        <key>RunAtLoad</key>
        <true/>
        <key>WatchPaths</key>
        <array>
                <string>/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.network.identification.plist</string>
        </array>
</dict>
</plist>

5) And set it to run with "sudo launchctl load /Library/LaunchDaemons/net.pugio.myipv6script.plist"

6) Restart (to be safe) and fire up the VPN (sometimes it takes a minute). In Terminal "ping6 ipv6.google.com" and you should get a reply.

7) Other machines can now do IPv6 and use this Mac as a gateway. You'll set the client computer's IPv6 on its primary network connection.

8) Make up an IPv6 address for the client computer from your /64 pool (HEMY64IP) like 2001:0123:123b:1234::2. Their gateway/router should be the same as the IPv6 (HEMY64IP) of your Mac, 2001:0123:123b:1234::1. Prefix/subnet is /64.

Original info from pugio.net and the HE forums. My advice, if the IPv6 networking you're doing seems to fancy it is. Restart to wipe everything back to start and do it again, simpler.

IPv6 Stuff

2010-07-07T15:51:00.008-05:00

About 2 weeks ago I purchased a new Dlink DIR-825 home router to replace my Dlink DGL-4300 that died. I'm not digging the DIR-825 as much, but one thing that has peaked my interest is that this is the first router I've owned that supports IPv6, the next addressing system of the Internet.

For years now my Mac/Linux/Windows machines have had blank entries in their networking preferences for their IPv6 addresses so I thought I'd finally check this out and see if I can get it working.

Turns out it's really easy. Even overlooking the bugs in the DIR-825 itself, with a few settings all the machines on my home network magically had IPv6 addresses and could bring up ipv6.google.com. I'm still playing around with the IPv6 settings on the router (debating 6to4 vs 6in4 Tunnel atm) but I'll be damned if a lot of this just works. Comparing back to the early internet days (remember MacTCP?) this stuff is completely autoconfiguring and drop dead simple.

So what is it good for?

Right. Ummm... well. It's an internet address. It's not going to do backflips or make you breakfast in bed, it's sexy because it just works connecting you to other computers.

The big advantage everyone talks of right now are "more addresses" than we have with IPv4. Right now my router and every computer on my home network has a "real" IPv6 address. I haven't seen computers on a home LAN have "real" IP addresses in a decade, they're too few to go around, so you get one real IPv4 address from your ISP and using all sorts of networking voodoo on your home router it slices that up for everything on your home network to use. But it's not pretty, not particularly fast, flexible, or reliable.

Having a real IP address is the hallmark of the Internet. It's how the whole system was intended to work. If I want to video chat with you my computer finds your computer, they handshake, and we video chat. Not this translated, forwarded, server/client model we've had to adopt since we don't have enough real addresses. I found a presentation by T-Mobile about how they get their phones to connect to the internet and it's all sorts of awful network hacking. Double/Triple/Quad NATs, hijacked IPv4 address blocks, huge data aggregation to a central point. No wonder it takes so long to load a web page over 3G and you can't use the cellular data network for anything neat yet, it's a total networking clusterfuck.

So far I've stumbled across two neat things IPv6 lets me do. When I'm running uTorrent I've noticed that some peers connect with IPv6 addresses. If you know anything about torrents then you know port forwarding and NAT are two of the hardest obstacles to overcome to maintaining a connection to other machines. IPv6 eliminates that concern since both machines have real routeable addresses and they just talk directly to each other. The other fun thing I found is with the tunnel at home and on my work machine I can suddenly VNC to either machine without changing any of the networking further up the line. Again, no NAT, no forwarding, just connect and go.

The thing is, these ideas are just reusing what we already have in a sense with IPv4. With IPv4 you get one real IPv4 address from your ISP. With IPv6 your little home network gets 18 billion real addresses. Your home network, everyone's home network. 18 billion things that can all talk to each other as peers, along with everything else on the entire internet.

What can you do with that? We don't even know yet. The coolest, most killer app isn't even a glint in someone's eye. It's like trying to guess the benefit of the Internet before household electrification. You can't even fathom it. This is the shape the Internet is suppose to take, not what we have right now. All we have now will look like just a big home network in 10 years.

My big hope and dream is that in the future you just get whatever you want from the net without giving a thought to the network. The network doesn't matter. It's always there around you, and your device just uses whatever it can see (wired, wifi, 3G, p2p, mesh, etc.).

So go check it out. Try setting it up. Poke and prod and see if you can get connected. It's not exactly fireworks if you can, and it's not the end of the world if you can't. But maybe by exploring now you unlock something later on while other people play catch-up.

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/network/IPv6_IGD.mspx - A nice look at what IPv6 is and how to setup your home network to use it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipv6 - An overview of the next internet with all the technical details.

http://test-ipv6.com/ - Check your system to see how ready you are for the next internet.

http://www.tunnelbroker.net/ - Get your IPv6 Tunnel if Teredo or 6to4 aren't an option.

http://ip6.me/ - Check to see if you have an IPv6 address
http://www.cnri.dit.ie/cgi-bin/check_aaaa.pl - AAAA record checking for IPv6 DNS sites

http://aboveaverageurl.com/atom.xml
http://www.personal.psu.edu/dvm105/blogs/ipv6/index.xml
http://feeds.feedburner.com/ipv6_blog - Blogs dealing with IPv6

http://freedns.afraid.org/menu/ - Free DNS setup and hosting. Point a real DNS name to your (really long & hard to remember) IPv6 address.

http://sixy.ch/ - Sites that are IPv6 enabled.

http://ipv6-test.com/ - Pretty IPv6 & IPv4 Speed Test

Grapes

2010-07-06T01:52:00.003-05:00

Looks like they made a video to go with the article.

Weekly Address: Jobs Creation from White House Weekly Address on Vimeo.

2010-03-02T23:42:00.002-06:00

I started working on my family genealogy in 2006 when I was in college and had lots of spare time to kill during the day. Asking around I received piles of photos & letters about the Balfours (dad's family), the Steussys (dad's mom's family), and the Evernhams (Laci's mom's family). To date I've scanned in the Balfour photos and I'm in the process of completing the metadata tagging on them (people in photo, location, date). So two more branches to go after this. Probably be another few years to get through.

At least ancestry.com has implemented the website mods I recommended years ago. :)

2010-01-30T15:10:00.001-06:00

Fake rubber stamp reading “IMPORTANT”: imagine a Discover® financial adviser, having carefully considered and personally chosen You, the Preferred Customer, as a candidate for this special offer, stuffing and sealing this envelope with satisfaction. “I hope this offer comes at a good time for this Preferred Customer,” he sighs, inclining a wrist to check a fancy watch below a rolled-up sleeve. “I hope they understand the importance of this information.” Then, taking another long, hard look at the envelope, already emblazoned by stripe and slogan, he rummages through a desk drawer, fingering through a collection of rubber stamps. “Aha!” he crows. Casually but firmly, he presses the stamp onto the kraft-paper surface, leaving the outlined word IMPORTANT shining in red ink in the dim, after-hours light. “That,” he thinks, “should do the trick.”

-Junk Me Harder

Can has faster interwebs

2010-01-06T10:28:00.003-06:00

Woot for T-Mobile upgrading their network. 3G speed on my phone here in the metro jumped from ~150 kb/s to ~800 kb/s. Good stuff. Now I just want my phone to update to Android 1.6...

http://androidandme.com/2010/01/carriers/t-mobile-news/t-mobile-completes-network-upgrade-3g-to-get-even-faster-in-2010/

Live video feed from a cellphone?

2009-12-11T15:46:00.002-06:00

Here's an interesting site that allows you to stream live video from your phone's camera, and have it displayed live on the net. Then once you stop recording on the phone the video is saved on the website, sort of a direct realtime upload to youtube. They have apps for iPhone, Android, & Blackberry. Pretty amazing, I didn't think this sort of thing was possible yet. Here's a demo video at http://qik.ly/ty1U

I wonder

2009-12-01T16:21:00.003-06:00

So Google Maps has been adding 3D models of buildings for some time now, but even as I fly through downtowns with all these buildings tower above me it still feels empty.

Why don't they render trees? What about the cars?

The satellite imagery is full of trees & cars, but they don't let you submit them as models. How hard would it be to use a simple fractal tree generator (like SpeedTree) to plop down trees where they appear on the map? If they can identify people's faces from photos I'm sure it could recognize a tree. Likewise in Building Maker it'll take the satellite imagery and texture a building with it, how hard would it be to plop down a rectangle and texture a car skin on it?

What's Google Wave?

2009-09-30T12:47:00.002-05:00

Ars Technica has a well-written, rather geeky review of what Google Wave is and how it works. Not too heavy on the user interface, but a lot of description of the backend and how it's able to do what it does.

C'mon google phone

2009-09-16T23:59:00.002-05:00

While I was investigating the new Android phones we're getting in January to replace the piece of shit Windows Mobile phones we have now I came across a neat idea. Stereo bluetooth headsets. No wires, digital quality, and the ability to hear and answer the phone in a noisy environment. These look like the best by far, have to add them to my wish list.

2009-09-11T16:09:00.000-05:00

Support Rant #218831

2009-08-24T15:28:00.002-05:00

Dear Person Asking for Tech Support,

When I spend 15 minutes writing a detailed walkthrough of the process you need to do to possibly resolve your problem I'm not typing all that for kicks. You really do need to attempt and follow the instructions.

Wildly guessing at causes, randomly performing various steps in my instructions, discussing your cat's third nipple, and incorporating other random people's support comments doesn't fucking help.

I await your response either stating you've somehow magically fixed the problem yourself, or you're fed up and don't want to work on this problem anymore and are going to go eat paste.

Counting the minutes,
Andrew

Overworked, is that you?

2009-08-20T18:36:00.002-05:00

Finally got the computer back. Apparently it was done yesterday, but nobody called, or sounded like they were going to call today. So I can has computer again.

The repair sheet didn't list any work done though. The hard drive's still the same, the serial numbers are the same as far as I can tell. Did they actually fix the machine or just push the magic button I don't know about?

Oh well, lets see how long it takes to burn it out again.

A warmup

2009-08-18T01:43:00.005-05:00

Yep, I'm still alive. 29 years of this so far. Hell, I feel like I'm just warming up at this point. It's only been the past 5 years or so (marriage ftw!) that I feel as if I really have gotten to be myself. Far enough away from the control of the parents to really figure out who I am, and with the awesome sidekick lacewindu to hang out with during the good, bad, and weird.

So what now? Meet more new and interesting people? Find some sort of specialty and dive in to the point where I can add something? Keep doing the 9 to 5? Rear offspring?

Truth be told, I don't really know. Arguably my brothers will probably go down the specialist track, and with their individual geniuses probably will contribute something important to their field. But while the thought of applying myself so much to one area is appealing in a lot of ways, I just don't think I have it in me anymore to focus so much on one task. I feel like I've seen something of life at this point, and I want to look at the broader scope instead of narrowing in.

Kids? No, I don't think so. Maybe when I'm older and wealthier there could be adoption, but right now a dog is all the extra responsibility I need.

Meet new people? I really am liking the hedonistic lifestyle, but at some point it'll slow. And I'm not enough of an extrovert that the idea of a jetski, mansion, and daily parties appleals to me. I need some time away from the crowd. But a good party every couple weekends is certainly worth it.

So that leaves the 9 to 5. Need to keep doing that. Got bills to pay. But you know, ultimately I think I'd like to be a house-hub-hub. I really didn't mind my time cooking, cleaning. repairing, and playing video games. I think it was the fact that I got to set my own schedule every day combined with a sense of accomplishment from knocking out the tasks I had each day that appealed to me. Laci talks of maybe law school somewhere in the future, and while the bills from that scare the crap out of me, maybe that would be a good way forward.

But at least I'm still here, undefeated, ready for the next challenge. I'm my own person now. I say bring it on...

Adopt a Pet fail

2009-08-12T16:33:00.001-05:00

Train Ride

2009-08-03T00:19:00.002-05:00

Last night I got a wild hair to take a train ride. A few weeks ago we stopped by the Minnehaha Depot in Minnehaha Park and I found out there's a train preservation society (www.trainride.org) in St. Paul that runs a short line out in Osceola, WI. Being our party month I figured price was no object and we got up at the crack of 9am to drive to Wisconsin and ride the old time train.

I thought it was cool, and I think some of my enthusiasm rubbed of on wife-wife since she didn't seem to entirely hate it. I kind of wish now that the windows opened on the Amtrak, it was nice getting the smell of the forest as you ride through it. Posted some pics of the trip if you want to glance at them.

Aug 2, 2009

PC gaming is really awful

2009-07-30T22:49:00.003-05:00

Originally I didn't agree with Newman (our IT/Network Admin) that PC gaming was a buggy, crash-ridden waste and the only good gaming anymore is to be had on one of the consoles. This was back before I got my new iMac, a copy of Windows XP, and Steam account.

Two months later, I see he was totally right.

Wow, here I thought all the Mac users were missing out because videogames haven't been ported to the Mac since the Paleolithic Era, but they're really not. Oh there's a few grand strategy games I've been playing that would be hell on Earth without a keyboard and mouse. But any games with a hint of action (*points an angry finger at Fallout 3 & Empire:Total War*) are a constant save/crash/restart loop. Amazing titles this broken even get to be released to the public.

That PS3 looks better all the time.

New location

2009-07-29T16:30:00.000-05:00

I've had enough of LJ. I finally was fed up with it when I tried to add one dumb little html badge to my post today and no matter what combination of voodoo I tried it never displayed it correctly. Combined with the gymnastics I get to do to add a picture to a post, the cumbersome customization tools, and their nagging to get you to pay for more features, I decided to move to Blogger instead. I tried Wordpress and even though it's pretty I get the same whining to give them money that LJ does. Since blogger is owned by the Google it ties in with all my other stuff and just seems to work, even if it's not the prettiest peacock. I'm also not sure on the "private" friend posts yet, but I suspect as people follow this blog I'll be able to mark posts and only readable by some. The rest of the public material gets indexed for posterity.

So, on with it.