Blog Archive: May 2017
Bad news: tech is making us more unequal. Good news: tech can make us more equal.
My latest Guardian column is Technology is making the world more unequal. Only technology can fix this; in it, I argue that surveillance and control technology allow ruling elites to hold onto power despite the destabilizing effects of their bad decisions — but that technology also allows people to form dissident groups and protect them... more
More computer history
I've started looking at a course on HTML programming. One of the exercises was to go to http://www.archive.org/ and check for the earliest occurrence of www.google.com. Answer: 11 November 1998. That seems late, but then, I didn't find out about Google for some time after starting to use the web. When was lemis.com first crawled? 26 May 1998, nearly 6 months before Google. And I also found an old version of my home page. That in itself isn't special: it was dated 7 February 1998, and RCS logs tell me that this was revision 1.6: revision 1.6 date: 1998/02/07 04:29:32; author: grog; state: Exp; lines: +51 -26 Updated PGP key, removed references to move.
Gareth and Rune
Hes leaving and shes dying. Still, these are happy pictures. Thats Gareth Kirkby, a friend for decades, who came over for dinner because wed drifted apart, its been a while, and because hes leaving (has left now) for Asia, on a trip without a scheduled end. Hes political, a good writer and a good person and full of surprises. Well miss him. In his arms, Rune the Bengal cat, who is 19 years old and failing fast; a list of her ailments would fill too much sad space. But the interventions have (just barely) not reached abusive levels, and they happen without the hated trips to the vet.
Refining event logs
More DxO Optics Pro crashes today. More event logs. How can I limit them? Played around a bit and found: After right clicking on Applications , instead of Save all events , select Create Custom View . Set the Logged entry to Last hour (the minimum; I have no idea how DxO expects you to select 10 minutes either way), and leave everything else at defaults: Press OK and give the view a name: ...
Image stabilization results: still no conclusion
I still haven't finished yesterday's image stabilization comparisons. First I need to establish which were taken with which kind of image stabilization. A look at the EXIF data shows: Image Stabilization : On, Mode 1 Image Stabilization : On, Mode 4 It seems that Mode 1 is lens stabilization (why?) , and Mode 4 is in-body stabilization (IBIS). So I hacked my EXIF display function and checked. Yes, nice. But that was for photos taken with the Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark II and other OM-D photos.
Windows 10 revisited
despair runs Microsoft Windows 10, one of the reasons it has been powered down so long. I had forgotten the pain, not all of which is Microsoft's fault. I still can't use Samba because of changes in the protocolsomething that I will try again when I upgrade eureka, probably this weekand rdesktop still doesn't work, though now it hangs rather than crashes. And once again I'm left marvelling at the way Microsoft keeps changing its user interface. At the very least it's an admission that the old one was suboptimal. Other things suggest that even the latest version of Windows 10 is surprisingly buggy.
despair: no hope?
I still have a license for DxO Optics Pro version 10, and so I could install it on further machines. But where do I find the installation file? I'm running version 11 on my current machines, and that's all I can find on the web, or on my machines. But then there's despair, my Microsoft Windows 10 box, which I haven't used for months. What's on the disk? Turned it on, and the fan went wild. No other reaction, and it stayed that way. Funny. It worked last time I used it. Tried removing all non-essential components, including disk, half the memory (added later) and all connections to the outside world.
My guest-appearance on Hello From the Magic Tavern
I’m a huge fan of the fantastically rude improv/current affairs/high fantasy podcast Hello From the Magic Tavern, I’ve enjoyed it ever since I binge-listened to the first season halfway through. Last month, I dropped into the Cards Against Humanity studios where the podcast is recorded while in Chicago on my book tour, where I sat... more
More DxO failure
Chris Bahlo has a free copy of DxO Optics Pro version 9, and she told me that it just says error when she tries to use it. Clearly a user error, not made more difficult by the user interface. So I suggested she came along and we looked at it. She came this afternoon, and we looked. It just says error when you try to use it. It had worked in the past, but then she removed some software that (she thought) wasn't needed, so that seems a likely culprit. In this case, maybe reinstall really would be the best choice, but it seems that she's being subject to an involuntary upgrade to Windows 10 next week, so we'll put it off to that.
More DxO breakage
It's been nearly 3 weeks since I reported a problem in DxO Optics Pro (ticket 118199): the conversion program DopCor.exe crashes at random. The quality of the responses I have received so far have exceeded my worst expectations. Firstly I was asked to reinstall the packagesomething that doesn't match the random nature of the problem. And to make matters worse, they required that I do it with Microsoft Internet Explorer . Why? Because it's more reliable. Comparison of the MD5 checksum didn't convince them. Finally, after a week, I was given instructions on how to supply information to them. So I waited for the next occurrence of the bug, which had clearly been scared away by the instructions.
Upgrading Olympus firmware
I've ranted frequently in the past about the appalling method that Olympus use to update camera and lens firmware. You must have a computer with a pre-installed operating system , also either Microsoft or Apple. And you need to have the camera powered on during the entire download operation. And the update program is flaky to the point of unusability. That's probably the background to their requirement of a pre-installed operating system : that's what they tested it with, and it has enough bugs that there's no way to be sure that it will work in the general case. But why write a program at all?
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Online education again
I've pretty much stopped doing online courses, but recently I found a couple that looked interesting: Introduction to Music Theory, something that I did half a century ago, but which might do with refreshing. But the course! It seems to be aimed at the John Lennons of the 21st century, people who enjoy pop music but don't know anything about the background. It was completely unscientific, and it turned me off completely. Still, that's only one course. Then there's the succinctly titled Science & Cooking: From Haute Cuisine to Soft Matter Science (part 2) (I didn't find out where part 1 went).
Talking WALKAWAY with Reason
My novel WALKAWAY is something of a fusion of the best elements of the anti-authoritarian left and the anti-authoritarian right. In a meaty interview with Reason Magazine, I discuss the politics and economics, and theories of human action with Reason magazine Editor in Chief Katherine Mangu-Ward.
Liverpool, Ill see you tonight on the Walkaway tour! (then Birmingham, Hay-on-Wye, San Francisco&) (!)
Thanks to everyone who came out for last night’s final London event on the UK Walkaway tour, at Pages of Hackney with Olivia Sudjic; today I’m heading to Waterstones Liverpool One for an event with Dr Chris Pak, followed by a stop tomorrow at Waterstones in Birmingham and then wrapping up in the UK with... more
Understanding modern disks
My photo disk is filling up again: === grog@eureka (/dev/pts/49) ~ 68 -> df -i /Photos Filesystem 1048576-blocks Used Avail Capacity iused ifree %iused Mounted on /dev/ada2p1 3,814,382 3,730,286 45,952 99% 1,175,738 1,005,252 54% /Photos Time for a new disk, at least 8 TB . But what? The backup disks I have are SMR, terrible on writes. But what I see offered are surveillance disks and NAS disks. I don't have a NAS system, though my NFS accessibility makes it look like that.
eBay failure 1
I'm a real cheapskate, and until proof of the contrary my main selection criterion when buying something is the price. My new Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark II uses a USB-C cable, something that I haven't had before. So I ordered one on eBay for the princely sum of $1. It was advertised for some Huawei device, but who cares? A cable is a cable, right? It took so long to arrive that I requested a refund. Not much response from the seller, so I asked eBay to moderate. Unlike my serious issues with their behaviour towards casual sellers, their response was immediate: they refunded the money.
London! Ill be at Pages of Hackney tonight with Olivia Sudjic! (then Liverpool, Birmingham, Hay&) (!)
Last night’s sold-out Walkaway tour event with Laurie Penny at Waterstones Tottenham Court Road was spectacular (and not just because they had some really good whisky behind the bar), and the action continues today with a conversation with Olivia Sudjic tonight at Pages of Hackney, where we’ll be discussing her novel Sympathy as well as... more
Ports pain
Recently I've been getting error messages from the automated builds of Hugin, so I set up a new virtual machine to build it in. What a pain! My port may be broken, but it's not alone. Spent much of the day building literally hundreds of ports (my guess is about 160 by the end of the day) and running into various problems. Finally texinfo broke hard, and I gave up and installed the package, which still failed because of help2man, whatever that may be. Another (tiny) package to install. There should be a way to tell port builds to install dependencies as packages.
London! Ill see you tonight on the Walkaway tour! (then Liverpool, Birmingham, and Hay&) (!)
Last night’s kick-off event for the UK Walkaway tour was brilliant, thanks to the magic combination of the excellent Tim Harford, the excellent people of Oxford, and the excellent booksellers at Blackwells! Tonight I’ll be at Forbidden Planet at 6PM to sign books, then we’re walking over to Waterstone’s Tottenham Court Road for
How difficult is it to enable HTTPS on a large website?
Very. The larger the site, the harder it becomes. My co-worker Nick Craver just blogged about the multi-year journey to enable HTTPS at StackOverflow.com and all our sub-properties (spoiler alert: there is still more work to do!) It is probably the best detailed description of the process. If your boss ever asks you why HTTPS can't be enabled in just a few hours, this is a good resource. https://nickcraver.com/blog/2017/05/22/https-on-stack-overflow/
How difficult is it to enable HTTPS on a large website?
Very. The larger the site, the harder it becomes. My co-worker Nick Craver just blogged about the multi-year journey to enable HTTPS at StackOverflow.com and all our sub-properties (spoiler alert: there is still more work to do!) It is probably the best detailed description of the process. If your boss ever asks you why HTTPS can't be enabled in just a few hours, this is a good resource. https://nickcraver.com/blog/2017/05/22/https-on-stack-overflow/
Mary Shelleys Frankenstein shows us how science fiction predicts the present and shapes the future
Frankenstein: Annotated for Scientists, Engineers, and Creators of All Kinds is a new MIT Press book commemorating the bicentennial of the publication of Mary Shelley’s seminal novel “Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus.” I was honored to be asked to contribute an essay to the edition, which they titled Ive Created a Monster! And so can... more
Oxford, Ill see you tonight on the Walkaway tour (then London, Liverpool, Birmingham&) (!)
I’m in the UK for the British Walkaway tour, which kicks off tonight at 7PM in Oxford where I’ll be in conversation with Tim Harford at Blackwells. Then I’m doing three events in London: a signing at Forbidden Planet at 6PM on Tuesday, then a conversation with Laurie Penny at Waterstones Tottenham Court Road at... more
Hugin broken again!
Received mail from the FreeBSD ports machines today: the Hugin build is broken. Something to do with GLEW, whatever that is (it claims to be the OpenGL Extension Wrangler Library , but I've never seen a need to wrangle any kind of extension). OK, remove Hugin and GLEW and build it from scratch. Works fine. Do I have an environment issue? I did this on eureso, which, as the name suggests, is a future eureka. Time for a build VM, so spent some time setting that up. ACM only downloads articles once.
Rock Surprise
On Saturday we accidentally took in two different very different pop-music concerts; I got one decent pic but ended the evening angry. Months ago, Id learned that All Them Witches were touring and bought Vancouver-gig tickets, because I liked the basic loud well-written tuneful guitar-rock songs Id heard on the radio or YouTube or somewhere. Then Lauren looked at the calendar and said But weve got Bobbis birthday party that night. But it was OK because the party was early. It was at the Fairview Pub, which Ive gone by on wheels and feet a zillion times, once or twice even recognizing the name of the bar band, but never inside.
Burbank: Im coming to you today on the Walkaway tour! (then Oxford, London, Liverpool&) (!)
I took great advantage of my 36 hour hiatus from the Walkaway tour, but I’m back at it today, with a 2PM appearance at Burbank’s Dark Delicacies, before I go straight to the airport to fly to the UK for my British tour. On Monday, I’ll be at Blackwell’s Oxford at 7PM with Tim Harford;... more
Talking Walkaway with Suicide Girls Radio
Nicole Powers interviewed me for Suicide Girls Radio and transcribed our wide-ranging, political conversation that ranged over Calexit, computer law, Occupy, and science fiction’s role in the world. NP: I watched your New York Public Library Q&A with Edward Snowden two days ago. You both spoke about immorality being used as a MacGuffin in the... more
Weekend Reading: Amazon Aurora: Design Considerations for High Throughput Cloud-Native Relational Databases.
In many, high-throughput, OLTP style applications the database plays a crucial role to achieve scale, reliability, high-performance and cost efficiency. For a long time, these requirements were almost exclusively served by commercial, proprietary databases. Soon after the launch of Amazon Relation Dabase Service (RDS) AWS customers were giving us feedback that they would love to migrate to RDS but what they would love even more was if we could also unshackle them from the high-cost, punitive licensing schemes that came with the proprietary databases. They would love to migrate to an open-source style database like MySQL or PostgresSQL if only such a database could meet the enterprise-grade reliability and performance these high-scale applications required.
Weekend Reading: Amazon Aurora: Design Considerations for High Throughput Cloud-Native Relational Databases.
In many high-throughput OLTP style applications, the database plays a crucial role in achieving scale, reliability, high-performance, and cost efficiency. For a long time, these requirements were almost exclusively served by commercial, proprietary databases. Soon after the launch of the AWS Relational Database Service (RDS) customers gave us feedback that they would love to migrate to RDS.
Vancouver, Ill see you at tonights Walkaway tour stop (then Burbank, Oxford, London&) (!)
Many thanks to the good folks who came out to Bellingham’s Village Books for last night’s Walkaway event; tonight, I’ll be appearing in Vancouver before flying home to Burbank for an event at my local Dark Delicacies on Saturday and then going straight to the airport for the start of my UK tour. I’ll be... more
May 2017 NYCDevOps Meeting Notes
Here are my notes from last night's NYCDevOps meeting. Title: Using innersourcing to break down organizational barriers Speaker: Aroon Gursahaney, Verizon This was one of the best talks I've seen in a while because it was entirely new material for me. I haven't heard of a company doing anything like this. Last night I learned: You can replace legacy systems by crowdsourcing parts of the project to people around the company in exchange for giving them the opportunity to learn new technologies, tools, and devops practices You can gamify culture change in an organization You cam make crowdsourcing the norm, not the exception.
Talking Walkaway on the Techdirt podcast
Last week I sat down with Mike Masnick, the crusading technology journalist who coined the “Streisand Effect” and runs the fantastic site Techdirt, and we had a good, chewy discussion (MP3) about my new novel Walkaway; he’s just posted it to the Techdirt podcast. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did!
See you tonight for the Walkaway tour stop in Bellingham! (then Vancouver, Burbank, Oxford&) (!)
Thanks to everyone (especially Neal Stephenson) who came out to last night’s Walkaway event in Seattle: if you’re in the area and couldn’t make it, you get another chance tonight when I’ll be at Bellingham’s Village Books at 7PM. After the event, I’m driving to Vancouver for an appearance tomorrow at the Vancouver Writers’ Festival,... more
Dead thermometer
I've had an infrared thermometer for a few years now, and in the course of time it has accumulated a fair amount of grime, to which function the plastic surface seems particularly conducive. Today I tried cleaning at least the display. Here the result afterwards: But even the slightest bit of moisture was too much. After cleaning it, I turned it on and it showed random error displays. Some moisture must have got in between the display and the frame. With luck, it'll be OK again when it dries out, but how long will that take?
A few tickets left for tonights event in Seattle! (the Bellingham, Vancouver, Burbank&) (!)
We had a fabulous time last night at Portland’s Powell’s City of Books and now I’m on the runway to fly up to Seattle for tonight’s event at the Neptune Theater with Neal Stephenson (it’s not too late to get tickets!) — then tomorrow I’ll be at Bellingham’s Village Books before heading to the Vancouver... more
The Blog March: A personal drumbeat of #resistance
This post is part of the Blog March 2017. Every day this month a different blogger is writing about politics. Please march along with us! A personal drumbeat of #resistance A friend of mine recently commented that she'd like to get more involved in the resistance. She had attended a march or two, but those were occasional and spur of the moment activities. She asked if I had advice about how to turn her occasional activism into something more sustained? In other words, how could she make more of a difference but not quit her job and dedicate her life to the resistance?
Improbable stories
Seen on IRC: a rejection letter for a novel. ACM only downloads articles once. It's possible that this article has changed since being downloaded, but the only way you can find out is by looking at the original article.
Kitchen archaeology
Last night I cooked Sauerkraut, for which I needed 2.5 g juniper berries. And that was all I had. The jar is finally empty. What does finally mean? Nowadays I write the date, and where appropriate the use-by date, on the label: And yes, it's typical that the spices have passed their use-by date. I always put them in sealed glass jars, and they keep well. But this didn't have a date: Looking back, though, it's clear that I've been through several iterations of label.
See you tonight at Powells, Portland! (then Seattle, Bellingham, Vancouver&) (!)
Yesterday’s Walkaway event at San Diego’s Mysterious Galaxy was terrific (there was birthday cake) and now I’m flying to Portland for an event at Powell’s City of Books tonight with Andy “Waxy” Baio before heading to Seattle for an event with Neal Stephenson at the Neptune Theater, then a stop in Bellingham’s Village Books. From... more
WannaCry: Heads must roll
Woke up to the news that Microsoft boxen round the world had been hit by a ransomware attack. Could it happen to my computers? No way! When I got up, found more information, later summarized in this CERT report: it was a known vulnerability that had been fixed a couple of months ago, and it relied on network accessibility. Yes, I use network facilities with my Microsoft boxen, but they're hidden behind NAT and a firewall. And I don't run email on them. So yes, it didn't happen to my computers, for all the above reasons. And of course ransomware relies on lack of backups, something that hasn't happened to me since long before Windows came in to existence, though it did give me cause to consider whether the default weekly backup is frequent enough, and I've changed it to daily to match my real computers.
I Dont Believe in Blockchain
There are conferences and foundations and consortia and keynotes; its the new hotness! But I looked into blockchain technologies carefully and Ive ended up thinking its an overpromoted niche sideshow. First off, I should say that I like blockchain, conceptually. Provably-immutable append-only data log with transaction validation based on asymmetric crypto, and (optionally) a Byzantine-generals solution too! Whats not to like? But I still dont think the world needs it. Im not stuck on the technical objections, for example to the laughably slow transactions-per-second of most real-world blockchain implementations. Where I work, scaling out horizontally to support a million TPS is table stakes.
See you this afternoon, San Diego! (then Portland, Seattle, Bellingham&) (!)
We had a great Walkaway tour stop last night in Scottsdale, AZ, and now I’m headed to San Diego to help the legendary Mysterious Galaxy store celebrate its birthday, closing out a fantastic day of speakers, readers and signings at 4PM. Tomorrow, I’ll be in Portland, OR, with Andy “Waxy” Baio, speaking at Powell’s City... more
See you tonight, Scottsdale, AZ! (then San Diego, Portland, Seattle&) (!)
Thanks to everyone who came out to last night’s Walkaway tour-stop at Houston’s Brazos Books; I’m just arriving at the airport to fly to Phoenix for tonight’s event at Scottsdale’s Poisoned Pen Books with Brian David Johnson. Tomorrow, you’ll find me in San Diego at Mysterious Galaxy’s Birthday Bash, and then on Sunday I’ll be... more
Extreme macros
Kev Russell has offered me a Zhongyi Mitakon 20mm f/2 4.5x Super Macro lens at a good price: Do I want to bite? Not at the moment, I think. But it's worth thinking about. The few images I've seen (not from Kev) haven't been convincing. What's the depth of field? The first thing to do is change my viewpoint on distance. Typical depth of field programs measure based on subject distance, but that's not even stated in this lens, just a magnification of (only!) 4× to 4.5×. Time to update my depth of field program.
Baked beans revisited
I've been eating baked beans for breakfast for some time now, and it's time to cook a new batch. It's clear that I need some kind of pulse to go with the meat, but somehow baked beans seem too British (though they're really US American). There are so many good Indian bean and (especially) lentil dishes. Can't I adapt some of that? The real question is how that goes with bacon and eggs. Today I started with Julie Sahni's Classic Indian Vegetarian Cookery , which was rather disappointing: it's over 450 pages long, but the only reference was in the overview on page 43, a single paragraph on Rajma dal.
Houston, Ill see you tonight on the Walkaway tour! (then Scottsdale, San Diego, Portland&) (!)
Thanks to everyone who turned up last night for a stellar event at Austin’s Book People! I’m about to head to the airport to fly to Houston, where I’ll appearing tonight at 7PM at Brazos Books, before heading to Scottsdale, AZ for appearance at Poisoned Pen (with Brian David Johnson)> From there, it’s appearances in... more
See you tonight in Austin! (then Houston, Scottsdale, San Diego&) (!)
We had a fantastic event last night at Denver’s Tattered Cover — thanks to everyone, especially the Denhack crew, for making it so great — and now I’m headed to the airport to fly to Austin for an event tonight at Bookpeople with a special guest appearance from EFF-Austin! Tomorrow night I’m at Houston’s Brazos... more
Wrapping up the Crooked Timber seminar on Walkaway: Coases Spectre
Two weeks ago, the excellent Crooked Timbre groupblog kicked off a symposium on my novel Walkaway, inviting ten scholars, practitioners, activists and thinkers to weigh in on the novel with thoughtful, sometimes sharply critical essays. Today, Crooked Timber publishes my response, an essay called “Coase’s Spectre,” about the underlying themes of the novel (as I... more
DxO superstitions
Since the most recent update, I've been having random crashes stopped working while processing my photos with DxO Optics Pro . While I was entering the other bug report, I reported this one too, asking what information they needed. The result blew my mind: Thank you for writing. Let's try re-downloading and reinstalling the program to see if this resolves the issue for you. Please use the instructions below and please be sure to follow every step carefully. Please download and install the program from the link below. We have just verified that this link is working properly, and that the file downloaded successfully installs the program.
DxO EXIF problems
Processing my first images with the Vario-Elmarit 12-60 brought a surprise from DxO Optics Pro : Huh? That's a Leica, not an Olympus. Yes, focal length and aperture are the same, but that's not a way to identify the lens, even if it's unknown: Makernotes tag 0x201 contains a code that identifies the lens, and if it's not known (like the Vario-Elmar), exiftool reports the code: 0x0201 Lens Type : Unknown (2 30 10) Time for a bug report, which DxO keep confidential.
Vario-Elmarit 12-60: first impressions
Unpacked and took a look at my new Leica DG Vario-Elmarit 12-60 mm f/2.8-4 this morning, including the obligatory first test photo: That was taken hand-held at ¼ s, and it's acceptably sharp. So why the new lens? It's a 12-60 mm f/2.8-4 zoom, and I already have an Olympus lens with those parameters. There's even reason to believe that it might be better; certainly a comparison of the maximum aperture is interesting: Looking at the raw data, it's not clear how much of this shows real differences in the optics, and how much is inaccurate reporting in the EXIF data.
eBay: on hold
eBay has responded with lots of stuff requiring investigation, but one that seems particularly dubious is that they can't stop booking from my credit card. It appears that they did so, as well. In Germany, at any rate, this would be illegal. I'll wait and see what happens, and then put in a formal complaint. ACM only downloads articles once.
See you tonight in Denver! (then Austin, Houston, Scottsdale&) (!)
Thanks to all of you who came out to my tour-stop last night for Walkaway at Winnipeg’s McNally Robinson bookstore — what a fine time we had! Now I’m leaving for the airport to fly to Denver, where I’m appearing at Tattered Cover at 7PM. Tomorrow, I’ll be at Austin’s Book People, before heading to... more
Accurate weighing
Making some nasi lemak (literally just the rice) today. The recipe calls for 800 g rice, and when it's done I freeze it in portions. But how big should the portions be? In the past I have decided on a weight round 140 g, but that's very unlikely to be an integral quotient of the total weight. Wouldn't it be better to weigh the pots and use that information to determine the total weight after cooking? Did that, and came up with a weight of 2160 g total. Deducting 10 for the daun pandan left me with 15 pots of 144S g each.
Olympus firmware update
The Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark II has been on the market for nearly 6 months now, and already we have the second firmware update. And what a whopper: 87 MB! ACM only downloads articles once. It's possible that this article has changed since being downloaded, but the only way you can find out is by looking at the original article.
eBay pain, continued
So why is eBay charging me so much money for last month, and why can't I find a detailed invoice? Their chat is still broken, so selected please call me on the web page. Quite quickly I got a call with the typical telemarketeer ploy of a long delayin this case, nearly 30 secondsafter which I heard a recorded message When Valued Customer is on the line, please press 1 . Yes, literally Valued Customer , and I don't recall them mentioning eBay. Then Please continue to hold . Another 2 minutes, and I was connected with Mark (or was that Marc?) . I told him of my issues, and he picked on the easiest one: why couldn't I log in to eBay?
3 things that made the 3rd edition better for education
The 3rd edition of The Practice of System and Network Administration was released last September. There are more than 600 new pages of material in this edition. What makes it better for classroom use? Before writing this edition we talked to many university instructors about what they liked or disliked about past editions. We listened! As a result: Shorter chapters. Educators want to assign 10-15 pages of reading each night. Many of our chapters were 40-50 pages long. We split chapters into smaller ones. Top-down organization. We start with best practices and work our way down into the details. Better exercises at the end of each chapter.
See you tonight in Winnipeg! (then Denver, Austin, Houston&) (!)
Thanks to everyone who’s come out for the Walkaway tour so far! Tonight, I’ll be appearing at Winnipeg’s McNally Robinson bookstore, then it’s off to Denver’s Tattered Cover, Austin’s Book People and Houston’s Brazos Bookstore. From there, the tour takes me to Scottsdale/Phoenix (where I’m appearing with Brian David Johnson), San Diego, Portland (where I’m... more
eBay, the next sting
After modifying my remaining eBay listing, got another password reset: We have reason to believe that your eBay account has been used fraudulently without your permission. Weve reset your eBay password. Any unauthorized activity, such as buying or selling, has been canceled and any associated fees have been credited to your account. Any listings that we removed are included toward the end of this email. We assure you that your financial information is securely stored on a server and cannot be seen by anyone.
How to support a writers career
Since the earliest days of my novel-writing career, readers have written to me to thank me for my books and to ask how they can best support me and other writers whose work they enjoy. Nearly 15 years later, I have a pretty comprehensive answer for them! Writers’ commercial and critical fortunes are intertwined: a... more
Wi-Fi on E-M10 Mark II
At my request, Chris Bahlo brought her Olympus OM-D E-M10 Mark II with her in the evening to try out the wireless control from a smart phone (OI.Share), about which I most recently grumbled a week ago. Apart from the fact that it might be interesting for her, I was interested to see how well she got on with it. Surprise, surprise. It worked well. Even the problems that I've always had with networking didn't occur. And she's quite happy with the app, and has an application for it, taking photos of herself in the riding arena when she's alone. So why doesn't it work for me?
eBay: One problem too many
I've had a surprising number of problems selling my lenses on eBay: eBay finds reason to believe that my account has been compromised, but doesn't give any reasons. Instead I just get my password reset. They change their password regulations from time to time without telling, so I have trouble logging in. They don't tell in advance what the password requirements are, so it's a matter of trial and error.
Focus stacking again
There's been some discussion about macro photography on the M43 Australia Facebook group, with the interesting discovery that a large number of people do it hand-held. The moderator, Kev Russell, seems to have hands of steel: he takes surprisingly good macro photos, and he recently published a photo taken hand-held for 60 seconds. I'm talking about equipment, and people don't believe me, even saying that focus rails are a problem with focus stacking; I'd think exactly the opposite. By chance my Hibiscus rosa-sinensis bush has produced another flower, so it seemed to be time to take some more photos: Once again nothing to be proud of.
E-M1 Mark II problem solved
I've been chasing the case of the lost WiFi emblem for some days now, and after the last exchange I wasn't expecting anything more. But today I got: When you turn off the touchscreen via J1 menu setting, it actually removed the WIFI icon. If you have done this deliberately, you can still deactivate the touchscreen by using the icon on the left hand side of the live view touchscreen, which will keep the WIFI icon active. How about that!
eBay pain, continued
Off to the post office to post the EC-20 teleconverter to France. It went relatively smoothly until I asked where the tracking number was. Sorry, no tracking number with this service, said Tim, who handled the transaction. I pointed out that the web site had claimed that there was tracking, and that that was very important to me. He scanned the item, it was accepted, and he said Ah, there must be one after all, it's there , pointing to a number on the receipt.
My column about Snowden, surveillance and WALKAWAY in the International Business Times
I have a column in today’s International Business Times: Unchecked Surveillance Technology Is Leading Us Towards Totalitarianism, where I discuss this week’s NYPL event with Edward Snowden and how mass surveillance connects to the themes in my novel Walkaway. In my science fiction novel Walkaway, I see an optimistic escape from the looming surveillance disaster.... more
A chat with the NEA, about WALKAWAY and sundry subjects
The National Endowment for the Arts podcast recorded a great, wide-ranging interview with me (MP3) about my novel Walkaway and a variety of subjects, from copyright reform to arts funding to the future of the arts and technology.
Chicagoans! Where to find me and Max Temkin on the Walkaway tour!
On Sunday, I’ll be appearing at Chicago’s Volumes Books with Max “Cards Against Humanity” Temkin, as part of the Walkaway tour (which includes stops tonight in Chapel Hill at Flyleaf Books with Mur Lafferty; tomorrow in Cincinnati at Joseph Beth; and more dates in Winnipeg, Denver, Austin, Houston, Scottsdale/Phoenix, San Diego, Portland, Seattle, Bellingham, Vancouver... more
Selling on eBay, continued
Another of my lenses has sold, this time the EC-20 teleconverter, interestingly enough to France. He even paid the postage in advance. Was it correct? Off to look at the Australia Post web site. At the top there's a link Parcels & Mail with submenu Sending overseas , which leads you to a Calculate postage & delivery times which conveniently defaults to within Australia , though the image of the Arc de Triomphe and Tour Eiffel suggest the country (if not the mentality) I was looking for.
Weaponized narrative: the stories we tell change our theories about the world
My latest Locus Magazine column is Weaponized Narrative, about the pulp fiction convention of mashing up “man against nature” stories with “man against man” stories to tell “man against nature stories” (first the tornado smashes your house, then your neighbors come over to eat you). These stories only work if you suspend your disbelief about... more
eBay: Where's my item?
For some reason I have a significant number of items I bought on eBay that are taking forever to come. None of them are important: USB cable, flash shoe cover, USB hub... USB hub? It no longer shows anywhere. I received a package nearly two months ago, but it was the wrong article. I had asked for a replacement, and they confirmed that they had sent it. But the first article arrived within 3 weeks, and now it has been nearly another 7 weeks. Where is it? It doesn't show on my eBay pages either. Not under purchased . Not under three different categories of problem items.
Android on Intel
I've decided I really don't like Android, but I have to live with it. In the course of the day came up with this page describing how to install Android on Intel. ACM only downloads articles once. It's possible that this article has changed since being downloaded, but the only way you can find out is by looking at the original article.
Identifying plants
Jamie Fraser pointed me today to a YouTube video about an Android app for identifying plants. Two of my hot buttons, But after some searching, came up with this link, which might be useful. ACM only downloads articles once. It's possible that this article has changed since being downloaded, but the only way you can find out is by looking at the original article.
Still Blogging in 2017
Not alone and not unread, but the ground underfoot aint steady. An instance of Homo economicus wouldnt be doing this no payday looming. So I guess Im not one of those. But hey, whenever I can steal an hour I can send the world whatever words and pictures occupy my mind and laptop. Which, all these years later, still feels like immense privilege. A lot of good writing is on Medium, which has learned its bloglessons. Shortish-to-longish form: check. Something fresh every day: check. Follow your faves: check. But on my phone, an irritating goober at the screens foot says open in app , trying to tempt me out of the blogosphere, off of the Web.
Faster, higher, stronger: How the digitalization of industry is redefining value creation
This article titled "Wie die Digitalisierung Wertschöpfung neu definiert" appeared in German last week in the "Größer, höher, weiter (bigger, higher, further)" column of Wirtschaftwoche. Germany's "hidden champions" family-owned companies, engineering companies, specialists are unique in the world. They stand for quality, reliability and a high degree of know-how in manufacturing. Hidden champions play a significant role in the German economy; as a result, Germany has become one of the few countries in Western Europe where manufacturing accounts for more than 20% of GDP. By contrast, neighboring countries have seen a continuous decline in their manufacturing base. What's more, digital technologies and business models that are focused on Industry 4.0 (i.e., the term invented in Germany to refer to the digitalization of production) have the potential to reinforce Germany's lead even more.
Walkaway tour! Richmond, Chapel Hill, Cincinnati, Chicago and more!
I’m in New York City today for the Walkaway tour and the event — an onstage conversation with Edward Snowden — is sold out (you can watch the livestream free, starting 7PM eastern), but there’s still space at my upcoming events. I’ll be at Richmond, VA’s Fountain Bookstore at 6:30PM on May the 4th (yes,... more
Faster, higher, stronger: How the digitalization of industry is redefining value creation
This article titled “Wie die Digitalisierung Wertschöpfung neu definiert” appeared in German last week in the “Größer, höher, weiter (bigger, higher, further)” column of Wirtschaftwoche. Germany's "hidden champions" ? family-owned companies, engineering companies, specialists ? are unique in the world. They stand for quality, reliability and a high degree of know-how in manufacturing.
Watch the livestream for tomorrows NYPL discussion of Walkaway with Edward Snowden
I’m on the US tour for my new novel Walkaway (I’ll be at DC’s Politics and Prose tonight), and tomorrow, I’m doing a sold-out appearance with Edward Snowden onstage at the New York Public Library; although the event is packed, I’ve just learned that there will be a free livestream starting at 7PM Eastern.
See you tomorrow in DC (then NYC, Richmond, Chapel Hill, etc!)
My US/Canadian tour for my novel Walkaway continues tomorrow with a 7PM event at Politics & Prose; I’m in NYC the next night (with Edward Snowden) and it’s sold out but you might be able to get some rush tickets; then on to Fountain Books in Richmond, VA; then Flyleaf in Chapel Hill. There are... more
Olympus photo software
Olympus provides lots of software of various kinds, ranging from camera firmware to processing software to remote control software. Where's there a summary? The only place I know (now) is my own Olympus photo software summary. And that's still a work in progress. In the process, it's interesting to note that http://www.olympus-imaging.com/ is homeless: no home page, and any attempt to access it will result in a 403 error. A medal for that webmaster! ACM only downloads articles once.
Selling lenses again
Another lens sold, the Zuiko Digital ED 70-300mm f/4.0-5.6. By coincidence, I got it 9 years ago today. First fun was printing the shipping label. When I had finished the web form (and had my money deducted), no label arrived. eMail? No. Tried reprinting a couple of times. Each time it looked as if it would work, but nothing came out of the printer. Printer problem? Printed a packing slip with no trouble, but the next attempt to print the label failed too. Finally I discovered that the page was too polite to send the document to the printer without my explicit request, and had stored multiple copies in ~/Downloads.
Announcing the Walkaway audiobook, with Wil Wheaton, Amber Benson, Amanda Palmer and more!
Here’s Wil Wheaton reading “Communist Party,” the opening chapter of “Walkaway,” my first novel for adults since 2009’s “Makers.” Wil is joined on the independently produced audiobook by Amber Benson (Buffy the Vampire Slayer), Amanda Palmer (The Dresden Dolls), Mirron Willis, Gabrielle de Cuir, Lisa Renee Pitts and Justine Eyre. It was directed by Gabrielle... more