Fnord.

I’ve been an RSS fan for years now, and with the advent of the iPhone/Google Reader combo I read even more. I used to use NetNewsWire, but by using Google Reader I’m always in sync on mobile and desktop. Their iPhone interface is really good, even on EDGE data rates.

Yesterday, I checked out Google Reader Trends, and found the following:

Umm, that’s a lot, right?

Kinda interesting. What I’m finding is that the iPhone allows me to do short newsfrouping sessions when I have a few spare minutes, so I end up reading more than I did before. I also really like that the load of loading feeds and pages is moved to Google, resulting in less laptop/PDA CPU usage and faster overall performance. It is, in a word, magnificent.

Even if you don’t have an iPhone or iTouch, Google Reader is still most excellent. If you do, fire up Safari and start keeping up with more of the world than previously possible!

Highly recommended.

P.S. I have several hundred feeds, with an unusual organization that I plan to post later. I’m also happy to share the list with you in OPML format if you want to jump-start your Reader setup.

Update: Here’s reading by time of day and day of week. Lots of late-night!

(With apologies to John Bunyan)

The other day at work we bought a new printer for our group, an Okidata C3400. Color, laser, 10/100 networked, drivers for OSX and Windows, under $400. 16 pages per minute in color, and a nice simple paper path that’s supposed to reduce jams. Reasonable in appearance, too:

Note the lack of an LCD display - you get the status info from the drivers:

I was struck by how cheap’n'cheerful color network lasers have gotten, and also how OSX is now a first-class citizen as far as working drivers. Very nice!

In my continuing watch something-or-other, I fished this lovely item out of Ebay with the proceeds from my WatchReport posting last month:

Vintage Seiko, 5606-7000, ‘LordMatic’. Automatic, center seconds, day/date, quickset, hacking, 23 jewels, 21600vph. (Low to medium beat). This one has a gold-plate case, which is why I got it for $51; the steel-cased watches are more popular.

I can’t tell if it’s a front-loading movement or not, the caseback is Kanji:

Update 8/18/08: A Japanese-speaking relative was kind enough to translate for me:

I think this watch was given to someone who worked for Japan National Railroad.

The top part is “Commemoration of Meritorious Service Award”
The bottom is “President of Japan National Railroad”

There’s a lot to like about this watch. I really like the aesthetics of the face, with gold baton markers on a subtle sunburst-patterned silver dial. The hands are aged just a tiny bit, and only one tiny dial spot below the date. The crystal is a replacement, which is good for me.

The looks are a lot like classic Grand Seiko, but for a teeny tiny fraction of the price. I’m going to look into the case, and see if its possible to remove the gold plate; not sure what the base metal below is. Electoplating is possible, but I don’t have access to do so.

As with most 5606 movements, the issue is that the quickset day/date pieces have failed, despite claims to the contrary in the auction listing. Sigh. That exceeds my skills, so I’ll have to send it off to Randall Benson or similar. Rats!

Update 7/24/08: The seller has quite kindly offered to fix the quickset, so I will mail it back to him and revert to anticipation. 

The movement is otherwise quite remarkable, well finished and very well designed:

It wears beautifully, amazingly thin and elegant. The silver dial glows in the light, and the dauphine hands are very easy to read. Now if I could just set the day/date right… Soon!

More information:

1. The Ebay auction where I got this one
2. In-depth on the 5606 movement, by Randall Benson
3. More on the cases and movement, Reto Castellazzi
4. Seiko abbreviations, this is where I deciphered ‘SGP stainless’
5. Seiko production date calculator - mine is 1968 or later, since serial missing!

Thanks to some kind relatives, I got enrolled in the Time Zone Watch School last year, level one. (Sounds vaguely Harry Potter, doesn’t it?) TZWS, as its known, is an at-home self-paced class where you buy the parts and tools to disassemble and then assemble a watch. It’s pretty basic, the movement arrives almost completely intact, and you choose case and such. However, you do get to do quite a bit, tearing down and reassembling is quite intricate and you learn more than you’d think. (See old posts here and here for a bit more.)

Yesterday and today I assembled it and cased it up, check it out:

I got 2 or 3 dials and 3 sets of hands with the kit, so when I get level 2 of TZWS I’ll probably change them both. I liked how this came together, though.

It was a good thing that I had previously ordered 2824 stems for JP, though, as I made errors trimming the stem. It’s tricky, even with a micrometer, and I might have to go back once more and try again.

TZWS is amazing, and I highly recommend it. You hafta buy a bunch of tools (all hail Bergeon!) but they’re first-rate and you can use them for years. The unexpected benefit to me is the very Zen nature of the work: You have to be utterly focused, unhurried and gentle. It’s very relaxing, which I didn’t expect. Rewarding, too, and you get to have this wonderful little machine with you all the time that makes you smile whenever you see it!

One of the minuses of urban life is traffic. It can be hellish, even though the locally-absurd gas prices have reduced traffic a bit. In particular, I am of the opinion that few things are ruder, stupider and more dangerous than a sports fan on their way to a game. Except maybe that same fan returning home after a few beers and a big loss. Locally, any time there’s a Padres game downtown, the traffic backs up highways 163, 805 and 5 for miles. The Chargers aren’t quite as bad, since Qualcomm Stadium is east a bit, but still a problem, as are things like Fleet Week.

For whatever reason, web-based traffic feeds don’t have any concept of ‘monstrous event with traffic implications,’ though I really wish they’d get a clue. Maybe add a sidebar?

Initially, I had the idea to simply subscribe to their respective iCalendar feeds, and be warned that way, but that’s pretty noisy; all you really care about are home games, but there aren’t separate calendars for that.

Recently I found a solution that seems to work quite well called FuseCal. It can read all sorts of feeds, including graphical calendars (impressive, that) and allows you to filter them via strings. So I have three feeds right now merging into a tag of ‘traffic factors’

1. Padres + “at San Diego”
2. Chargers + “Qualcomm Stadium”
3. Fleet Week (all)

If you have any suggestions as to other events to add, leave a comment, also if you want I can make the feed public. So far I’m pretty happy - this is a free service, it works very well and the merge of feeds produces information that’s hard to get otherwise. Very cool.

I was reading about Google Gears, and discovered that Firefox 3 on OSX is supported. It’s a quick install, and once you do so check out Google Reader - you’ll find ‘offline mode,’ where Reader will slurp down data for use offline and re-sync fast when you’re back to civilization.

Another reason to love Reader! It makes a compelling case for Gears, too. Highly recommended.

No, it’s not terribly impressive, and no it’s not a huge amount of work either, but that’s my first Cocoa GUI program, hacked just a bit from the example in the textbook. (Cocoa programming for Mac OS X, third edition.) Kudos to Kevin for the tip; Aaron Hillegass is an unusually gifted author and his experience teaching the material shines through on every page. Highly recommended.

I’m having a lot of fun with this. Objective-C is pretty simple for anyone with C, and 10.5 adds garbage collection. I was reading 2nd edition and hating the retain/release manual memory management, so auto-GC is a huge incentive for me. InterfaceBuilder is still complicated, but the book explains well so off we go!

This is really a post about two things, so bear with me. Cast your mind back a few years to Bush’s heyday and Medicare Part D, the infamous drug benefit. Due to pharma handouts and dishonest accounting now coming to light, they couldn’t afford real coverage and came up with the infamous ‘doughnut’ gap in coverage. From Wikipedia:

The plan requires Medicare beneficiaries whose total drug costs reach $2400 to pay 100% of prescription costs until $3850 is spent out of pocket. (The actual threshold amounts will change year-to-year and plan-by-plan.) 

I have to assume that the soulless bastards who came up with this consciously refused to consider the human stories of suffering and tragedy it would inevitably cause. I consider this a prime example of ‘getting captured by a large system and the rationalizations that ensue.’

Stories like… but I’m getting ahead of myself. The other thing this post is about is ‘Weblogs that I enjoy’. Allow me to introduce you to the self-proclaimed ‘Drugmonkey‘, an anonymous, foul-mouthed, cynical, liberal pill peddler at some large pharmacy chain. He has most excellent stories and I highly recommend him. As with some of my favorite blogs, he gives you a glimpse into another world. The title of his blog is ‘Your Pharmacist May Hate You’, which gives you some idea of the content…

Today, I was clicked through to his site and reading some old stories when I found this one. He used to call himself ‘drugnazi’, and it explains why he changed. Go read it; it’ll simultaneously move you to tears and also to find the asshats of Part D for a serious beatdown.

‘Compassionate conservatism,’ my ass.

This morning, in my inbox, this is what I saw:

That is, 37 reports that a host had tried to break in to my SSH port, and failed more than one password attempt. If I weren’t running DenyHosts, the dictionary attacks would have a lot greater chance of succeeding. As it is, I’ve seen at least 50 hosts blocked today; usually I get one every few days. Sadly, I’ve not got over sixty five thousand hosts denied via DenyHosts, which is a sad commentary on how many cracked Windows machines are out there.

Patch and monitor those boxes, people!

It’s the last day of the Java One conference, which has been pretty darn good, and I get this email from the organizers:

The JavaOne conference team has been notified by the San Francisco Department of Public Health about an identified outbreak of a virus in the San Francisco area. Testing is still underway to identify the specific virus in question, but they believe it to be the Norovirus, a common cause of the “stomach flu”, which can cause temporary flu-like symptoms for up to 48 hours. Part of the San Francisco area impacted includes the Moscone Center, the site of the JavaOne conference which is being held this week. We are working with the appropriate San Francisco Department of Public Health and Moscone representatives to mitigate the impact this will have on the conference and steps are being taken overnight to disinfect the facility. We have not received any indication that the show should end early, so will have the full schedule of events on Friday as planned. We hope to see you then.

Please see the attached notification from the Department of Public Health.

Uhh, yeah. Norovirus, to quote the Wikipedia, “causes approximately 90% of epidemic non-bacterial outbreaks of gastroenteritis around the world,^[1][2] and is responsible for 50% of all foodborne outbreaks of gastroenteritis in the US.^[3] Norovirus affects people of all ages. The viruses are transmitted by faecally contaminated food or water and by person-to-person contact.^[4]“

(You may remember noroviruses from several on board cruise ships. It sounded pretty hellish at the time.)

What’s more, “After infection, immunity to norovirus is not complete nor long-lasting.” (Wikipedia again)

There’s more info at the SF department of public health page; that’s where I got the picture.

After pondering a bit, I decided that the two sessions that I had left weren’t reason enough to run the risks, and hopped a flight home a day early. United wanted a mint to return early (boo!), and the Serrano Hotel charged me a hundred bucks to check out early (double boo, you loser bastards!), but SWA came through with a total fare of 145.

Other than that, the conference was most excellent. And I’m healthy, and home.

Update 5/10: Story from SFGate is here, says ‘about 70 people’ got sick.