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• Doug 11:18 pm on April 28, 2004 | 0 | # |
  Tags: Apple, Technology

  BluePhoneMenu adds cell phone Caller ID to your Mac:

  bq. Developer Reel Intelligence has released BluePhoneMenu, which adds Caller ID for one or more Bluetooth-equipped cell phones to your Mac. It alerts you to incoming calls and keeps track of calls received, listing names, times and which phones received them. It can also monitor the signal strength and remaining battery power of your phones, as well as alert you to new voice messages and tell you if your phones are on silent mode or off the hook.

  Downloaded it this morning and gave it a try, but didn’t have much luck. For some reason, it wouldn’t maintain the Bluetooth connection with my Nokia 3650 for more than a few minutes. I suspect this has more to do with how I have things configured than it does with the software itself, but I was busy today and didn’t have any time to fiddle with it.

   

• Doug 11:17 pm on April 28, 2004 | 0 | # |
  Tags: Uncategorized

  Both …but she’s a girl and Jon’s 08# - The Grey Notebook have undergone revision and redesign in the past few days. bsag’s new design is so nice it makes me jealous of her design talents in addition to her uder-geek technical skills. Jon is separating more technically-oriented posts into a new weblog, while keeping 08# more focused on general observations. Both bsag and 08# are excellent blogs - and now, thanks to Jon, I have yet another subscription to add to my aggregator.

   

• Doug 3:03 am on April 27, 2004 | 0 | # |
  Tags: Environment, Space, Whackos

  whump.com | More Like This WebLog: A Species of Category Error - Sunday, 25 April 2004:

  However what I learned from the exchanges, to paraphrase Teresa Nielsen Hayden, was:

  “I deeply regret how the Conservative movement has made me react to any person of faith as if they were a nutbar.”

  Everytime I read or hear someone on the Right invoke God to justify behaving heiniously, I’m going to have to count to ten and remember that my friends such as Bernie or Teresa wouldn’t categorize what was said as Christian.

  I, on the other hand, have long felt that any and all people who follow any of the Religions of the Book are at least mildly irrational. The more fundamentalist they are, they more crazy in my opinion. That impression pre-dates the “current unpleasantness” by several decades.

  http://www.doug-miller.net/blog/archive/scientistssaymeteori.html
  Mon, 26 Apr 2004 21:57:10 -0500
  http://www.doug-miller.net/blog/archive/scientistssaymeteori.html

  Space

  Environment

  demiller@gmail.com (Doug Miller)

  Yahoo! News - Scientists Say Meteorite Hit Wisconsin: Scientists years ago saw something different about rocks here and concluded an ancient catastrophic event occurred, although what type of calamity remained a mystery.
  They believe they have finally solved the puzzle: A 650- to 700-foot meteorite crashed into the earth at

  Yahoo! News - Scientists Say Meteorite Hit Wisconsin: Scientists years ago saw something different about rocks here and concluded an ancient catastrophic event occurred, although what type of calamity remained a mystery.

  They believe they have finally solved the puzzle: A 650- to 700-foot meteorite crashed into the earth at speeds up to 67,500 mph.

  The impact 450 million years ago dislodged rocks and created a massive hole in a 4-mile area called Rock Elm about 70 miles east of Minneapolis, three scientists said in an article published in the Geological Society of America Bulletin.

  Yet another big hole in the ground caused by stuff falling on us. An impact of that size must have been visible from here around Indianapolis, if there’d been anyone to see it.

   

• Doug 2:57 am on April 27, 2004 | 0 | # |
  Tags: Science

  Asteroid May Have Hit 250M Years Ago: A massive asteroid may have collided with the Earth 251 million years ago and killed 90 percent of all life, an extinction even more severe than the meteorite impact that snuffed out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago.

  A new study, based on meteorite fragments found in Antarctica, suggests the Permian-Triassic event, the greatest extinction in the planet’s history, may have been triggered by a mountain-sized space rock that smashed into a southern land mass.

  and…

  Controversial New Claim in Death-by-Asteroid Case: A long standing mystery over what caused five great mass extinctions, including one that destroyed the dinosaurs, has grown with the release of two studies today in the journal Science.

  In one study, researchers make the bold claim that an asteroid is responsible for the death of most life on Earth in a catastrophic extinction 251 million years ago. Other scientists are not ready to accept the claim.

  Meanwhile, other researchers have been working to understand what role volcanoes might play in mass extinctions.

  Deadly climate-altering gases spewed by volcanic eruptions could be the main culprit behind mass death, some figure. Others suppose volcanoes play just a supporting role. There is also the question of whether asteroid impacts trigger the volcanic activity and so are the root of all this evil either way.

  Sounds to me like NASA ought to be getting to work on that Near Earth Garbage Collector sometime real soon.

   

• Doug 10:04 pm on April 26, 2004 | 0 | # |
  Tags: Outliners, Tinderbox

  Tinderbox 2.2 is out. Despite Mark’s assertion that this is primarily an infrastructure release designed to get things ready for Tinderbox for Windows, Eastgate has, as usual, made the application even better. Improvements include:

  * Quick lists (great for making weblog posts!)
  * Improved HTML export features
  * Improved, faster spell checking, which is a godsend in long notes
  * Improved RSS and Atom support, including support for the date format required for valid Atom XML

  Tinderbox has become so ubiquitous to how I work that it’s nearly become something I don’t even notice anymore. Every day, I continually have three to four Tinderbox documents open. It would be far more difficult to run my business without it. Aside from my Day Book document, which I use to keep track of all the myriad calls, documents, and personal interactions I have throughout the day, and my web log, I use Tinderbox to track the details of every home I show to every client. These applications aren’t always the most glamorous, but I couldn’t stay on top of things without them.

  Edited 4/27/04 to correct typographical errors caused by sleep deprivation and general exhaustion.

   

• Doug 1:39 am on April 26, 2004 | 0 | # |
  Tags: Work, World

  The temperature plunged 30 degrees here overnight, eventually turning the nearly torrential rain that accompanied the frontal system that swept through into some light snow. Certainly nothing to get excited about, but annoying as a reminder of the coming winter, nonetheless.

  Yesterday I had two hours of floor time and then three hours at an Open House, neither of which turned up a single prospect. Not one call, not one Open House visitor. Aside from it being the weekend before Thanksgiving, I think people were spending time outside enjoying our last nice weekend rather than worrying about buying a new home. We’re moving into the holiday slump.

  My morning appointment was postponed this morning, as well. Normally Monday mornings are a bit hectic as I rush to get new prospects from the weekend entered into my database, and then select an Open House for the next weekend. After that, I have to write the ad copy for next Sunday’s paper for the Open House I’ve selected. Toss an appointment on the other side of town into the mix, and I’m swamped.

  Since it’s Thanksgiving weekend next weekend, however, I’m not doing an Open House. Cross that off the list. No prospects from this past weekend, so strike that, as well. No ad copy to write. Strike. No appointment. Strike that, too.

  Suddenly, my morning is empty.

  Time to whip out the old database and start making prospecting and follow-up calls, I guess. Winter is not a lot of fun.

   

• Doug 6:57 pm on April 25, 2004 | 0 | # |
  Tags: Work

  I’m sitting in an Open House directly across the street from the home that I lived in for ten years, and moved out of almost two years ago. Real estate is full of slightly surreal moments like that.

  I’d also like to mention that as of last night, I passed the one million dollar mark for sales volume for the 2004 calendar year. That puts me at nearly $1.6M for my first eight months in the business. The majority of new agents in our market area do not crack the $1M mark during their first year, so I’m pretty happy with how things are progressing.

   

• Doug 2:39 am on April 24, 2004 | 0 | # |
  Tags: Apple, Technology

  Fingerworks Giant Touchpad Keyboard: A keyboard without any key travel or spring-loaded der klikken would drive me nuts, but you’ve got to admire the dedication to integration the FingerWorks Zero-Force keyboards show: basically touchpads with keyboard overlays, the typing surface doubles as a giant mousepad, making all the swooshy swoops and gestures that you kids are into just a spasm away. They’ve even got a version that replaces the keyboards in the newest iBooks and Powerbooks, if you want to ruin a perfectly good laptop.

  These keyboards look really interesting to me, but I’d want to spend some serious time trying one out before laying down the serious money they’re asking for one. I use the keyboard as much if not more than the mouse, and nothing sucks worse than a marginally functional keyboard when trying to get some serious work done.

   

• Doug 2:20 am on April 24, 2004 | 0 | # |
  Tags: Books, Media, Technology, Tinderbox, Work, World

  Yahoo! News - Columbia Crew Coffins Mistaken for Caskets of U.S. Military Casualties: It is a story that will have journalism professors, conspiracy theorists and free speech advocates confused, amused and most likely up-in-arms until the next media scandal appears.

  On Friday, NASA sent out a press release saying that several news organizations had mistakenly identified pictures of the flag-draped coffins of the Space Shuttle Columbia’s crew with images of coffins of war casualties from Iraq.

  Uh, whups…

  http://www.doug-miller.net/blog/archive/stgeorgesday.html
  Fri, 23 Apr 2004 21:17:02 -0500
  http://www.doug-miller.net/blog/archive/stgeorgesday.html

  World

  demiller@gmail.com (Doug Miller)

  Guardian Unlimited | Today’s issues | St George’s Day: St George’s Day is a time to celebrate the patron saint of England and syphilis, who survived almost as many murder attempts as Rasputin. Here’s our guide to the best sites on the dragon-slaying hero
  I had no idea that St.

  Guardian Unlimited | Today’s issues | St George’s Day: St George’s Day is a time to celebrate the patron saint of England and syphilis, who survived almost as many murder attempts as Rasputin. Here’s our guide to the best sites on the dragon-slaying hero

  I had no idea that St. George is the patron saint of syphilis! For that matter, I had no idea that syphilis had a patron saint, or even needed one.

  The rest of the article is interesting, again full of information about England’s patron saint I had no idea about. I’d always thought George to be uniquely British, it turns out that he wasn’t British in the slightest, and that he’s also the patron saint of several other European countries. That’s what I get, I guess, for not being raised Catholic.

  http://www.doug-miller.net/blog/archive/thesilmarillionin100.html
  Thu, 22 Apr 2004 22:38:29 -0500
  http://www.doug-miller.net/blog/archive/thesilmarillionin100.html

  Books

  demiller@gmail.com (Doug Miller)

  camwyn: And now the ENTIRE THING.: AR-PHARAZON: I’ve got a huge navy! Let’s go conquer Valinor!
  VALAR: Oh no you don’t. *CRASHBANGBOOM*
  AR-PHARAZON & CO.: Eeek!
  ELENDIL, ISILDUR, ANARION: Wheee!
  NUMENOREANS: Arrgh!
  NUMENOR: SPLOOSH.
  SAURON: Bwa ha ha! Um, where’s my body?
  ILUVATAR: Did I mention the world is round

  camwyn: And now the ENTIRE THING.: AR-PHARAZON: I’ve got a huge navy! Let’s go conquer Valinor!

  VALAR: Oh no you don’t. *CRASHBANGBOOM*

  AR-PHARAZON & CO.: Eeek!

  ELENDIL, ISILDUR, ANARION: Wheee!

  NUMENOREANS: Arrgh!

  NUMENOR: SPLOOSH.

  SAURON: Bwa ha ha! Um, where’s my body?

  ILUVATAR: Did I mention the world is round now?

  NUMENOREANS IN EXILE: Well, crap.

  I think I hurt something I laughed so hard at this. I would have laid money on it being impossible to make Tolkien’s Silmarillion even slightly funny, never mind downright hilarious!

  http://www.doug-miller.net/blog/archive/notsolittleanymore.html
  Thu, 22 Apr 2004 22:30:32 -0500
  http://www.doug-miller.net/blog/archive/notsolittleanymore.html

  Blogging

  demiller@gmail.com (Doug Miller)

  Hal’s Ian is two-and-a-half today. Check out the picture of him directing Easter maneuvers while Indiana Jones Dad looks on… Hal looks insufferably pleased. I know the feeling.

  Hal’s Ian is two-and-a-half today. Check out the picture of him directing Easter maneuvers while Indiana Jones Dad looks on…

  Hal looks insufferably pleased. I know the feeling.

  http://www.doug-miller.net/blog/archive/expertsstudyancientb.html
  Thu, 22 Apr 2004 22:25:40 -0500
  http://www.doug-miller.net/blog/archive/expertsstudyancientb.html

  World

  demiller@gmail.com (Doug Miller)

  Yahoo! News - Experts Study Ancient Boat Found in Idaho: Archeologists and divers are studying what may be an ancient dugout canoe found submerged under 40 feet of water in Lake Pend Oreille.
  Matthew Russell, an underwater archaeologist with the National Park Service headquartered in Santa Fe, N.M., said it

  Yahoo! News - Experts Study Ancient Boat Found in Idaho: Archeologists and divers are studying what may be an ancient dugout canoe found submerged under 40 feet of water in Lake Pend Oreille.

  Matthew Russell, an underwater archaeologist with the National Park Service headquartered in Santa Fe, N.M., said it may take several weeks to determine the canoe’s age and origin.

  “This could be the only known find of its kind in Idaho,” said Mary Anne Davis, assistant archaeologist with the Idaho State Historic Preservation Office in Boise. “It’s pretty exciting — we really don’t know what we have.”

  Evidence of an ancient trade in spuds?

  http://www.doug-miller.net/blog/archive/thearbitrageopportun.html
  Thu, 22 Apr 2004 22:10:36 -0500
  http://www.doug-miller.net/blog/archive/thearbitrageopportun.html

  Work

  World

  demiller@gmail.com (Doug Miller)

  Morrow’s Blog: Now that the world has embraced outsourcing to India, it has, in effect, killed the golden goose. Because everyone is now pursuing outsourcing, real wages are going up and will soon near US rates, and turnover is going up as a highly competitive market competes for the best

  Morrow’s Blog: Now that the world has embraced outsourcing to India, it has, in effect, killed the golden goose. Because everyone is now pursuing outsourcing, real wages are going up and will soon near US rates, and turnover is going up as a highly competitive market competes for the best workers…

  I think Marty is spot on in his comments here. Over time, the net effect of outsourcing will result in a general levelling of wages and costs to perform similar work on a global scale, to some extent by retarding wage growth in developed nations, but primarily increasing wages in developing countries. This is evidently occurring in India right now - however, I expect the process to take longer than Marty seems to be suggesting. The next logical step if for work currently being outsourced to India to be outsourced to some other country.

  Marty’s a smart guy, and his company offers an attractive alternative to the “chasing shadows” nature of trying to cut costs via outsourcing. I think he’s on to something that makes a lot more sense than just trying to bundle up your work and ship it somewhere else.

  http://www.doug-miller.net/blog/archive/turningpageswithoutc.html
  Tue, 20 Apr 2004 22:33:27 -0500
  http://www.doug-miller.net/blog/archive/turningpageswithoutc.html

  Books

  Technology

  demiller@gmail.com (Doug Miller)

  Guardian Unlimited | Online | Turning pages without cracks or tears: The British Library has put 10 of its greatest and rarest literary treasures, from the Lindisfarne Gospels to the world’s earliest dated printed book, the Diamond Sutra, on to the internet.
  Tony Blair yesterday hailed the project, Turning the

  Guardian Unlimited | Online | Turning pages without cracks or tears: The British Library has put 10 of its greatest and rarest literary treasures, from the Lindisfarne Gospels to the world’s earliest dated printed book, the Diamond Sutra, on to the internet.

  Tony Blair yesterday hailed the project, Turning the Pages, as a “magnificent example” of what the internet could achieve.

  The electronic facsimiles are so realistic that the pages do appear to crinkle as they are turned by mouse clicks. However, the damage is an illusion. Smaller details, almost invisible on the actual manuscripts, like the realistic cat on the opening page of the Lindisfarne Gospel of St Luke, are revealed by a zoom facility.

  This may very well be the coolest thing I’ve seen online in a couple of years. “Turning the Pages” is an amazingly fine example of how to apply modern technology to make rare or unusual materials more widely available. The quality of the scans is amazing!

  A notice on the page claims that the documents are only available in MS IE, but I had no problem accessing several of the texts via Safari.

  http://www.doug-miller.net/blog/archive/christopheontinderbo.html
  Sun, 18 Apr 2004 19:10:24 -0500
  http://www.doug-miller.net/blog/archive/christopheontinderbo.html

  Tinderbox

  demiller@gmail.com (Doug Miller)

  christophe thinks out loud: Eastgate Tinderbox: You would think that one of the most obvious uses for a laptop is to take notes. But until recently, I just couldn’t get into the habit. Too many years of taking notes in traditional notebooks. Word is too much in some ways (I

  christophe thinks out loud: Eastgate Tinderbox: You would think that one of the most obvious uses for a laptop is to take notes. But until recently, I just couldn’t get into the habit. Too many years of taking notes in traditional notebooks. Word is too much in some ways (I spend too much time worrying about getting the text styles right), and not enough in some ways (if you need to start a new, but related, note stream, a new document seems like too big a jump, just hitting return five times seems not like not enough).

  Then, I tried out Tinderbox from Eastgate. The initial learning experience, I must admit, was not instantaneous. It was a bit like having a new, eager personal assistant who only spoke Serbo-Croatian . . . the ability and desire to help was obvious, but we just didn’t speak each other’s language.

  As with most international relationships, though, this problem was quickly overcome.

  Another one drinks the Kool-Aid, and becomes a Tinderbox devotee. I recently remarked on Jon’s innovative uses for Tinderbox - Christophe appears to be using it to handle (among other things) shooting logistics for porn videos. How’s that for innovative?

   

• Doug 8:13 pm on April 17, 2004 | 0 | # |
  Tags: Apple, Books, Technology

  McGee’s Musings: What makes good science fiction work, and the reason I continue to make it such a major component of my fiction reading, is to make plausible hypotheses about a technology innovation and then be relentless in pursuing that “what if” wherever your understanding of behavior and society leads. Morgan does exactly that. If technology could give you a real-time backup brain that essentially lets you cheat death (but not pain), where does that take you? To some frequently nasty but compelling places.

  McGee’s Musings: Long before William Gibson launched the genre of “cyber-punk”, Brunner was writing about the impact of information technology and accelerating change on society. This is Brunner’s effort to understand what Toffler’s Future Shock might feel like in human terms. To me, it’s one of the more effective examples of why someone once described science-fiction writers as the “advance planning department for the human race.” And it’s a hell of a good story, besides.

  Both excellent novels. I read Altered Carbon last year, and Brunner’s Shockwave Rider some considerable time before that. Of the two, Shockwave Rider is the better and more influential book, but Altered Carbon is still a very good, very fun read. Morgan’s Broken Angels, a sequel to Altered Carbon, is on my reading shelf right now.

  http://www.doug-miller.net/blog/archive/heliodisplay.html
  Sat, 17 Apr 2004 13:36:36 -0500
  http://www.doug-miller.net/blog/archive/heliodisplay.html

  Technology

  demiller@gmail.com (Doug Miller)

  Ottmar Liebert: The inventor must have been startled when he saw the movie “Minority Report”, because his invention, the Heliodisplay, is very similar to the transparent gesture screen Tom Cruise uses in it. More photos of the display here.
  Looks pretty cool, but I have to say I didn’t notice

  Ottmar Liebert: The inventor must have been startled when he saw the movie “Minority Report”, because his invention, the Heliodisplay, is very similar to the transparent gesture screen Tom Cruise uses in it. More photos of the display here.

  Looks pretty cool, but I have to say I didn’t notice much resemblance to the displays in Minority Report.

  http://www.doug-miller.net/blog/archive/ditchingthedock.html
  Sat, 1 May 2004 16:32:09 -0500
  http://www.doug-miller.net/blog/archive/ditchingthedock.html

  Apple

  demiller@gmail.com (Doug Miller)

  ditching the Dock (Surftrail): Tog hates the Dock in Apple OS X, so these tools help you cope without it, so you can make it small and hidden. I’ve tried it for a week, and I don’t agree with Tog.
  I’ve gotten used to the Dock, and removing it makes

  ditching the Dock (Surftrail): Tog hates the Dock in Apple OS X, so these tools help you cope without it, so you can make it small and hidden. I’ve tried it for a week, and I don’t agree with Tog.

  I’ve gotten used to the Dock, and removing it makes me slower.

  Some of the software was very good, however.

  I find that I flip back and forth regarding the dock. For a long time I made extensive use of it. Coming from a Linux background, the OS X dock was a welcome friend, very much like the dock in Windowmaker, the X11 window manager for *nix. That’s not surprising, given that both are descended from NeXTStep.

  At other times, I feel the need to hide the dock to reduce screen clutter. It seems like I go along like this for a few weeks, but eventually always end up bringing the dock back for ease of use. Like Anders, I keep it pinned to the left side of the screen - the original NeXT location and the only rightful position!

  I also have to agree with Anders on the software Tog recommends. I’ve found a lot of it quite useful. I commonly use Windowshade X, FruitMenu, Shapeshifter, and Quicksilver. I’ve tried LaunchBar and DragThing, but didn’t really care for either.

   

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