Stop Quotation Mark Abuse!

The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks

Katana vs. 9mm

Further proof that YouTube does, indeed, have everything:

My Plate Runneth Over...

When discussing workloads, we often invoke the analogy of "the plate," and we talk about how "full" our plate is. In this context, we've been consistently reminded of the lessons of youth regarding the need to "clean our plate" at every meal; leaving the merest morsel of work uneaten is one of the few cardinal sins at the dinner table of employment. We're discouraged from over-committing ("take what you want, but finish what you take"), but the illusion that we have control over what we "take" repeatedly breaks down -- especially during "special," or difficult, times. (For now, we'll neglect that "difficult times" tend to become the norm when "Management by Crisis" is the foundational culture of the organization. This management technique, while outwardly easy -- because humans naturally seek leaders in a time of crisis -- is most often really a sign of a "crisis of management" caused by an endemic, and apparently irrevocable, lack of foresight.)

Allow me to extend the analogy of the plate, as it applies in "special times" -- regardless of whether such times have become the rule rather than the exception: Today is a special day, say, your birthday... Your family has taken you to a certain Amarillo steakhouse with a particular penchant for excess. Because you've been raised to "take what you want, but finish what you take," you order the 8 oz. sirloin. Your doctor would advise you to only consume 3-4 oz. of red meat during the course of a meal, but this is a "special day," and this particular steak is the 2nd-most humble slab of beef on the whole menu -- you wouldn't want to disappoint your family, after all. Well, it turns out that your family maintains their traditional values, and therefore can't pass up the opportunity to save some money ("waste not, want not"); so when you get up to wash your hands, your father calls over the wait staff and substitutes the *FREE* 72 oz. steak for your already-slightly-too-robust sirloin. Your meal arrives, and you protest that there clearly must have been some mistake, but your father calmly explains how much money you'll be saving for the family -- if only you can polish off four and a half pounds of beef in under an hour. Even though what your ordered would have cost $16 at the end of the meal, and this abomination costs $72 up front (refunded only if you complete the "challenge" successfully), your father smiles about how much money he is saving for the family, and encourages everyone to "dig in" to their meals. At that point you stop staring at your own plate for a moment and look around the table for the first time; you see that all of your siblings are facing a similar quandary. Since you're not alone, you feel obligated to try; since the clock is already inexorably counting down what remains of your precious hour, you suppress the urge to protest further and start cutting, piercing, shoveling, and chewing... Needless to say, there is an intrinsic -- but unstated -- requirement that you (and all of your siblings) rise to this challenge, lest the whole family should be forced to suffer as a result of your gastronomic ineptitude...

At least that's what seems to happen where I work...

World's Largest Photograph

The world's largest photograph was made by converting an aircraft hangar into both a giant camera and giant darkroom.

Useless? Perhaps. Cool? Definitely.

Bluetooth GPS and VMWare Fusion

Yes, VMWare Fusion does indeed support mapping the MacBook Pro's built-in Bluetooth radio to a Windows VM. As this screencast movie demonstrates, once the radio has been remapped, you can use your Bluetooth devices from within the virtual machine.

Only two minor caveats for my fellow adventurers:

• Fusion will warn you that you need to load the BootCamp drivers on the VM when you enable the Bluetooth radio for the VM. This can be safely ignored if you are using a physical BootCamp partition as a VM, but is important to keep in mind if you are using a file-based Windows VM onto which you haven't previously installed the Apple built-in Bluetooth radio's driver for Windows.
• The COM port mappings for Bluetooth devices will be different depending on whether you've accessed the BootCamp partition physically (by rebooting and holding "Option / Alt") or as a virtual machine (from VMWare Fusion). Just be aware of this, and be sure to configure your devices before using them.

The MBP w/ BootCamp Seamless HDD Upgrade

When I got my MacBook Pro (2.33GHz C2D), the biggest 7200rpm drive that Apple offered was too dang small for my tastes, so I opted for the (cheaper) 5400rpm 160GB drive. I had everything configured nicely, but had only carved off 18GB (NTFS) for my XP Pro BootCamp partition. Well, when one game (TOCA 3, which I absolutely refuse to uninstall) sucks up ~6GB of that space, that obviously isn't going to be adequate. Also, since I like to produce vacation videos to commemorate my travels, I need a significant amount of working space on the OS X (HFS+) partition, and didn't want to sacrifice the ability to work a good-sized project without having one of my external drives tethered.

The Problem
I wanted to execute the HDD upgrade -- gaining more space for both OS options, and switching to a 7200rpm mechanism to help whilst performing the aforementioned untethered video work, Photoshop activities, et.al.; however, I would consider a requirement of performing a reinstallation of either OS to constitute failure.

The Hardware for the Solution
First I went to OWC, and procured their Mercury On-the-Go 2.5" SATA external enclosure. I opted for the USB 2.0 / eSATA combo version; after giving strong consideration between the FW800 and eSATA options, I chose the more future-proof eSATA version. After looking at the prices of the versions that included a drive, I realized that I could go to NewEgg and get the Hitachi 7200rpm 200GB SATA-2 2.5" drive (including shipping) while still saving a significant chunk of money vs. the pre-assembled drive from OWC.

The Software for the Solution
I needed a way to replicate or image both OS X and Windows XP. A couple of seconds of Google Search action resulted in finding SuperDuper!, which appeared to fit the bill nicely for my OS X duplication and future bootability requirements.

Since I've been a "PC Guy" for a long time, I had a licensed copy of Symantec's Norton Ghost laying around, and thought that it may meet my needs on the XP side. But, alas, that would have been too easy -- the version I had (Ghost 2003, a.k.a. version 9.0) didn't support the GPT partition scheme, and couldn't make a partition image of the XP BootCamp partition. I had another brilliant idea, and tried to execute the Ghost imaging process from within VMWare Fusion, but Ghost couldn't see the C: drive via the VMWare driver (Curiously, it could see my external drive -- close, but no cigar...) I couldn't see any clear indication that the current Ghost 12 package would resolve this for me, and they wanted $50 (upgrade price) just for the chance to try -- no thanks, I just spent enough hard-earned cash on the hardware... There are also some widely-discussed problems trying to use a *.DMG disk image from OS X's Disk Utility to successfully image BootCamp, so I started the Windows phase of the game with 2 strikes...

Luckily, there are some clever folks out there who know how to leverage tools that have been in development for quite some time and make them accomplish new tasks. Enter WinClone, which is heavily based on the hard work by the good folks at the Linux-NTFS project. This little gem lets you save off an image of your NTFS partition and restore it to another partition. The use of the ntfstools is executed nicely, and WinClone manages to pull off the restoration in a way that continues to make BootCamp happy and bootable.

High-Level Description of the Process

1. Gather all the required HW and SW for the process
2. Install the replacement HDD in the enclosure, attach the enclosure to the MBP via USB
3. "Initialize" the new drive: make a single partition that consumes the whole disk (we'll make the new BootCamp partion later), format it as HFS+, and name it "Macintosh HD" (because we're shooting for a seamless transition)
4. Use SuperDuper! to make a full and bootable copy using the Backup -- All Files method
5. Reboot, hold in the "Option / Alt" key, and boot from the newly-cloned drive to make sure it works.
6. (Optional) Reboot back to the original internal HDD for now.
7. Run WinClone, create an image file from your BootCamp partition (mine was the 3rd partition -- or slice -- on the first disk on my MBP, namely /dev/disk0s3), and save it as a file somewhere that you'll be able to access later (I would suggest one of your HFS+ partitions, and the clone is a good choice for this purpose, because you won't have to tether an external drive to restore it).
8. Shut down the computer completely, and prepare for the disassembly. I used a #000 Philips and a T6 Torx driver to perform the dirty work. You can refer to the ExtremeTech or iFixIt guides to complete the diasassembly [remove the plethora of itty-bitty screws that are required to remove the palmrest / top cover (4 on one side, 4 on the other side, 4 on the bottom, 2 on the back, 2 near the memory cover, 2 under the front lip beneath the battery, etc...), disconnect the keyboard/trackpad cable, and remove the drive (2 more screws, some tape, and an interface cable).] Needless to say, use your brain to avoid ESD zapping of your computer's sensitive and/or delicate parts... Note: There were some minor differences between my MBP and the first-gen model used in the iFixIt guide, but they were farily trivial (e.g. no bluetooth board, and different HDD mounting assembly on the right-hand side).
9. Take the replacement drive out of the external enclosure, migrate the HDD mounting bushings (and / or brackets on other systems) to the replacement drive, install the replacement drive into the system, and put the bloody thing back together...
10. Boot to your migrated OS X system (if you haven't been following along , you may be horrified that you --temporarily -- have no BootCamp partition). Since you tested it in step 5, you should already know that this will just work. Thanks, again, to SuperDuper! for making this so part of the migration so dang easy.
11. Run BootCamp Assistant and carve off a new BootCamp partition on your new internal HDD (I chose 45GB this time, because I want more than 2 games on my Windows XP installation).
12. Start the Windows installation, and get past where you've formatted the C: drive as NTFS. Note: you don't have to finish the Windows installation.
13. Reboot back into OS X, and run WinClone to restore from the file created in step 7 to your newly-created BootCamp partition (now you can clearly see why I suggested storing the file on the new drive).
14. Reboot, hold "Option / Alt", boot to Windows, let it run chkdsk, then repeat to complete the Windows portion of the migration.
15. Grab a cold one, and enjoy...

Getting VMWare Fusion to Recognize the Change
After the upgrade, VMWare Fusion couldn't start the VM that was based on the physical BootCamp partition, because the partition table was different. It recommended removing and re-adding the disk to the VM config file, but there's an easier way. I simply deleted the VM config file (/Users/[your_user]/Library/Application Support/VMWare Fusion/Virtual Machines/Boot Camp/[your /dev/disk#]/Boot Camp partition.vmwarevm), and then let VMWare Fusion rebuild the VM file... That did the trick, and I just hit cancel to avoid re-installing the VMWare tools (since they're already installed).

Mission Accomplished!
That's it: a few hours of time resulted in more space for both OS environments, and a little more speed as well. I also accomplished my prime objective of not having to reinstall either OS, re-apply any customizations, re-download any tools, etc... Oh, yeah, and I walk away with a pretty sweet 160GB bus-powered USB 2.0 HDD that happens to also support connection via eSATA.

LEGO® Construction Video

During my assembly of LEGO® model #10030, the Ultimate Collector's Edition Imperial Star Destroyer, I took photos after each major sub-assembly was completed. These photos have formed the basis for this Shockwave movie, which condenses several days worth of assembly tasks into less than a minute. (I originally thought about taking a bunch more pictures and doing the full-blown time-lapse treatment, but didn't have either the requisite discipline or the requisite level of OCD to follow through with that plan.)

After joining the "elite ranks" of crazy folks who have not only acquired, but also assembled a kit containing 3,104 LEGO® brand interlocking plastic bricks, plates, and various other pieces into this giant (37-inch long!) model, I can honestly say that I don't think the upcoming Ultimate Collector's Millennium Falcon model -- which features more than 5,000 pieces -- is in my future...

P.S. - That really long description and the link that it points to begets its own form of hilarity. I suggest that you follow that link and read the legal text regarding "How LEGO^® Enthusiasts May Refer to LEGO Products on the Internet" and related subjects. In fact you should print that page, xerox the printout about 10 times, fold a couple of the xeroxes into a coaster for your coke, and use others as kleenex.

P.P.S. - If you represent the Coca-Cola, Xerox, or Kimberly-Clark corporations, the above P.S. is intended as a parodic commentary on the state of trademarks and IP law in the age of the blogosphere. Such parodic commentary has generally been upheld as a form of fair use, although some may argue that its intrinsic satirical nature undermines my claim. (Reference (PDF): "The Satire/Parody Distinction in Copyright and Trademark Law— Can Satire Ever Be a Fair Use?")

Potential Mac Screen Properties Life-Saver

I managed to freak out the display settings for my screen that was set as the primary display (TV via the S-Video out adapter, because I was using Front Row, and didn't want to use mirror mode) on my notebook this morning by magically switching it to PAL and hitting OK while moving the notebook. [This particular maneuver requires a unique mix of uncanny bad luck coupled with a distinct lack of caffeination, and is neither likely to occur nor recommended.] Well, being an resident of the USA, said TV's S-Video input needed an NTSC signal, and so things were not exactly happy. Because of the way OS X puts the properties page for a given screen on that screen (which is normally nice) and because it also lacks a hot-key for moving a window, I was fairly hosed for a while.

Plugging back in my DVI monitor didn't help (separate settings were maintained on a per-device basis), and I simply couldn't find the darn settings anywhere in the Library or elsewhere... I got lucky, though, that monitor happened to have an S-Video input, and managed to sync with the 50Hz signal. That change in luck allowed me to reset the mode in which the TV adapter was running successfully. But, what would I do if I ever hosed something in an manner that was not so easily recoverable?

Enter cscreen, the hard-to-find (because the author abandoned it and his site) utility that allows modification of OS X display settings from the command line. I finally found it on the ScriptBuilders site, and am pleased to report that it works as designed -- allowing screen properties to be properly transmogrified from the command line. This even works from an SSH session, so now no amount of sleep and caffeine deprivation mixed with poor thumb placement can ever cause near-tragic screen gobbledy-gookage ever again...

Oh, yeah, this also makes it easy to switch which screen is the primary, and to rig up some scripts to switch among settings that I may want to use from time to time. Now, I still kinda want to find where these settings actually live, but that's a project for another time.

New Silly Illustration

Ridin' with Lance (PDF format -- because I want to make a T-shirt)

Hair-brained mumbo-jumbo numero uno

Some corporate linguists like to go with the four E words and the three R words when discussing employer-employee relations. Being a sophisticate, I prefer the verb forms of these words to the contrived noun forms. (Of course, the verb forms imply that action may be required, and management theories are supposed to shy away from that...):

• E words
  
• Empower
• Enable
• Engage
• Encourage
• R words
  
• Respect
• Recognize
• Reward

Interestingly, the first two "E words" represent things that individuals in an organization generally get for themselves, because they simply couldn't do their jobs otherwise. Therefore, they only require management intervention in the form of removing external roadblocks. Our theory should incorporate enough management awareness to perceive these roadblocks and act without being prompted / begged to do so.

The other five things can probably be combined into a cohesive formula for employee motivation, if we can figure out how to map them on a chart and subsequently devise a self-test that deterministically and artificially lets people sort themselves accordingly. Of course, before doing that, we'll have to enroll in a post-graduate Psych program.

CEO-speak, merger edition

Bust out your buzzword bingo cards folks. It's merger season, and the CEOs are spouting this season's freshest corp-jive. Two fantastic case studies in highly-evolved, value-added diction that is both empowered by, and leveraging of, the unique corporate lexicon are presented below to enhance your short-term amusement value.

Energizer acquires Playtex. Guess that means we'll soon be seeing the world's first battery-powered ______. Oh, it turns out that Playtex makes other products, Energizer already owns Schick, and this is mostly a bid to compete with P&G (who happens to own Duracell). But, that would sound bad, so here's the official corporate-speak version from Ward M. Klein, Chief Executive Officer of Energizer: "We are very excited about bringing the world-class businesses and people of Playtex into the Energizer family... We see Playtex as an exceptionally great fit with Energizer, with similar customers and distribution channels in the U.S. and Canada, and the opportunity for geographic expansion in many other areas of the world where we currently do business. We also believe there are significant integration and cost reduction opportunities for the combined businesses. Energizer will emerge with a more diversified portfolio of products, and greater scale in the personal care category, which will now be more evenly balanced with our household goods business. It will also provide a platform for possible additional value-adding acquisition
Meanwhile, IHOP will eat Applebee's and turn almost all of their corporate stores into franchises. The quotable clap-trap press release was absolutely full of the word "re-energize;" it includes the following yawn-tastic quote by IHOP Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Julia Stewart, who will lead the management team of the combined Company: “Over the past year and a half, we have been evaluating alternatives that would allow us to leverage IHOP’s proven competencies in order to create additional long-term value for shareholders, including a potential acquisition. Applebee’s meets all of our acquisition criteria and we expect the combination to generate significant additional value for our shareholders.”

Prescription for innovative management theories

1. Find a PhD student in psychology.
2. Assign a thesis wherein said student is expected to spew forth a new and innovative management theory.
3. Faculty review: Ignore the fact that the great majority of these theories work by way of generalization and over-simplification, and therefore ring just as true as the predictions of your average Ren-Fest midway fortune teller.
4. Partnering and Profit: Many of these amazing systems go on to become books and even seminars, it's absolutely staggering. Now, to make this work you need a nifty chart and a self-test that allows folks to assign themselves to one of your neatly-defined and mostly useless categories.

In the real world, these generalized categories (e.g. types of motivation, types of interpersonal interaction, etc.) are actually variable and highly situational. But, you can't sell a book that says that...

Happy Birthday "Star Wars"

Tomorrow, May 25th, officially marks the 30th anniversary of the release of Star Wars. Not surprisingly, this film, along with its sequels and prequels, has served as a cultural anchor for an entire generation. The BBC has joined the festivities by posting the following 30 trivia items.

No ManU on TV for me

Looks I'm going to have to follow along online for the duration. Thank goodness for http://www.premierleague.com/ and its real-time ticker...

FSC isn't running the Manchester Derby this Saturday, and the critical ManU / Chelsea match on Wednesday, May 9th has two problems that I won't be able to work around in real-time:

• It's only on PPV, and even then only at selected pubs, so a 1pm match is virutally unwatchable
• I'll be in Washington State, and at a conference, so playing hooky is also 100% off the table
  

Mountain Bike Rides

Here are a couple of maps generated from traces collected by my bicycle GPS device:

• Wolf Mountain Loop at Pedernales Falls State Park
• Last Sunday's Austin Ridge Riders "Beginner's Ride" at Walnut Creek Metropolitan Park

It's still fun to play with the toy. These simple trace logs don't include the HRM, speed, or cadence data that make it even more fun...

Dang! No DeepFish for me!

So, yesterday Microsoft Live Labs released DeepFish -- an enhanced browser for Windows Mobile 5 and 6 devices. But, by the time I got around to trying to download it today, they had filled all of their "slots" for the "technology preview."

Guess it's a good thing I still have Opera! Being forced to use Pocket IE is not a valid option...

New Hosting Provider

Update: Migration went pretty well, photo map updated with new links.

I am in the process of migrating my site to a new hosting provider. Red Check used to serve me pretty well, but lately they've been pretty close to horrendous in terms of service level. So, I picked up a GoDaddy plan for about 55% of the cost, that offers 10 times as much storage and transfers and lets me configure a greater number of databases, too.

Because I'm not a huge MySQL/PHP expert, I decided to re-create my Coppermine gallery from scratch. Luckily, the batch upload is working on the new site (it always bugged me that it didn't work on the old provider). That means I can also migrate my legacy hand-coded galleries into the database more easily... So, I won't have to maintain two separate gallery pages with perpetually outdated links. I will, however, have to fix the links on my map -- most of them will be broken as a result of the gallery rebuild.

Dan Brown's Doormat?

The graphic on this doormat forms a nice symbiotogram, but is conceptually similar to the ambigrams from Angels and Demons...

Wonder if they'll have a US distributor... I can always claim I just cleaned it and didn't realize that it was "backwards"...

GPS + HRM for the Bikes

I burned my REI Dividend and 20% member coupon on a Garmin Edge 305, which is basically the be-all/end-all of bicycle computers. I got the fully loaded version with the Heart-Rate Monitor (HRM) and the cadence sensor, then went on Amazon and ordered a 2nd cadence unit for the other bike...

I have the unit configured to display seven data points simultaneously: Ride time (stop watch), Current cadence, current speed, ride distance, current time-of-day, current heart rate, and estimated calories burned.

With the GPS and this unit's barometric altimeter that increases the accuracy of elevation data, I can do crazy correlations like notice that as I climbed that easy hill, my speed stayed within a 2mph window, but my heart rate went up 15%. Basically, I'm my own science project now. This week's task: use published mechanisms to establish a good baseline for what my actual max heart rate is. I can download all of the data to my computer and do fun things like analyze my performance over time and even plot course maps using Google maps or Google Earth...

New Template

While my old template was nice and simple, it was also not very stylish. I'm working on customizing this one a bit. All of the font sizes, etc. are different than the old one, so I'm working out the details...