Mike Rundle's Weblog

That New Obsession, Horology

When I learn about new things and find them interesting, I usually dive in and learn all I can about this new fascination. I did this in college too, I'd sign up for classes with 3-4 pre-req's that I didn't have, just so I'd learn more stuff more quickly and not be bored. Well my latest obsession has reared its ugly head, and that ugly head is horology.

Basically, horology is the study of timekeeping: how it's done, how watches are made, the science and technology behind watch movements, etc. I've been obsessed with watches since I was younger (bought a $250 Sector Chronograph after my Bar Mitzvah, aka, 13 years old, woot!) but recently I've gotten back into it after having poked through various watch magazines.

Why Expensive Watches Are Expensive

This question has been racking my mind for a long time now, as I'm sure it's been racking yours too (yeah right!). Why is it that you can purchase a Timex watch for $30, or a fancier Citizen/Seiko/whatever for $100-$200, but then a Rolex or Patek Philippe costs you $5,000 or more? What is the difference between the watches, and what justifies the price increase? I'm not an expert, but here's what I've learned so far:

How it works.
What makes a watch actually work and keep time is its movement. The movement is the technology inside the watch that produces a reliable sequence of events that can be turned into hands rotating or digits changing on the watch face to tell you the time. Cheap watches probably use a quartz movement as they're easy to mass produce, but mechanical movements are something special. Mechanical movements are produced by the artful work of a master watchmaker who places hundreds of tiny parts into a watch case in order to form a little machine that tells time. Here are some pictures of a mechanical movement that show off how complicated they are: one, two, three.

You're probably used to Quartz movements and little circular watch batteries as they're the norm with regular watches, but mechanical watches work differently — they don't use batteries. A mechanical watch retains energy in a few different ways: 1) by winding the watch, or 2) by the movement or swinging of your arm while it's on your wrist. Mechanical watches have sophisticated spring mechanisms inside that store the energy generated by your arm's movements (or the winding of the watch) and use that stored energy to power the watch's mechanical movement and timekeeping. The actual manner in which it turns this stored energy into the winding gears that tell time differs greatly across mechanical watch brands, and it is the innovation in this area that makes these types of watches so very expensive and sought-after. The mechanism that starts the gears turning from the stored energy is called the escapement, and there are dozens of different types of escapements. Think of inventing an escapement mechanism as "inventing the wheel". Usually people say they don't want to reinvent the wheel, but in horology, reinventing the wheel by engineering and designing new escapements is what keeps the science of watchmaking exciting. Different watch escapements basically do the same thing, but in extremely different and interesting ways, and it is these diverse ways of doing the same thing (transferring stored energy into gears turning) that make mechanical movements so very expensive and intricate.

Complications.
A complication is anything that the movement does besides telling time. Some common complications include calendar functionality, GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) calculation, multiple timezones, chronograph (stop watch) functionality, and more. These alternate watch functions don't just magically appear on their own, but need to be engineered carefully into the overall movement of the watch which makes complications jump the price of the watch up over traditional watches. Other complications include fancy or exorbitant escapements, where instead of just starting the gear movement they have additional (but unnecessary) pieces, or happen to rotate around the watchcase (Tourbillion escapement), or any other crazy things you can think of. Complications make the watch movement.... more complicated.... and a complicated mechanical process means that more labor is needed to design the watch and put it together so it makes it more interesting and expensive.

Material.
Horology is not about the jewelry aspect of watches but rather the engineering and science that goes into making them, however the material of the watch obviously makes it more expensive. Some watch enthusiasts think that a watch with a cheap Quartz movement but 10ct of diamonds on the bezel does not count as haute horologie, or a horological masterpiece of watch, and I agree. Just like some people buy a BMW 3-series not because they're fans of the 50/50 weight distribution or the German engineering, but because it's a fancy BMW they can show to their friends, many people spend 5 or 6 figures on a Platinum-cased, diamond-studded watch with a $5 chinese quartz movement. Some watches are expensive because they're fancy and are made of rare materials, others are expensive because they contain 400 different mechanical pieces and gears all assembled by hand, and others still are expensive because they exhibit both those traits. I personally would rather spend a few thousand dollars on a watch that is an engineering masterpiece than a cheap watch that's made more expensive by gems on it, but that's just my personal preference.

Some Fun Watch Links

After talking about all that horological craziness, you might be interested in learning more about automatic mechanical watches or just what kinds of watches exhibit these beautiful traits, so here's a quick list of some stuff to make you unproductive for the rest of the day. Enjoy!!

Panerai Watches: I love how these look, so very classic while modern at the same time.

Quartz vs. Mechanical: Diagrams and explanations better than what I've done here.

A Lange & Soehne: Absolutely beautiful watches, made in Germany.

Ventura Watches: Automatic movements attached to digital readouts, very cool.

Ylunch.com and High5Advertising: PR and the Conversation

Coming here from Google? please read this first as this situation has been cleared up and his company's site has been redesigned.

A few days ago I wrote an entry about Greg Sirochinsky's company High5Advertising having a striking resemblance to Doug Bowman's Stopdesign.com. The reason I wrote the entry wasn't because of the way it looks, but because I didn't like how Greg handled the situation from a PR standpoint. Doug Bowman is arguably the #1 most well-known web designer in the world, and using his company's site design for High5Advertising's site probably wasn't the best decision in the world, however an apology and design removal would have cleared the situation up. As I noted in the previous post, the company did make a good decision when it reached out to bloggers, however instead of belittling the power of the independent web by putting us on the defensive, they should have given us gift baskets for blogs can make or break your company's perception from a PR standpoint. Just a day after I wrote the post, the bloggers they reached out to are already on their radar:

Google "high5advertising" & "Greg Sirochinsky"

I posted about it, some friends of mine wrote in as well, it was on Digg, and it's now also on Pirated-Sites.com. If you search for the company or the head of the company, Greg Sirochinsky, you will inevitably learn about High5Advertising's design vs. Doug Bowman's design, and the blatant similarities.

Greg called me today, and obviously he was a bit upset — now whenever somebody searches for his company's name on Google they'll find various weblog posts and will read about the events that transpired. I told him that if he puts this text in the footer of all pages on High5Advertising's website, I'll take down the offending entry and all will be forgiven:

Portions of this design influenced by Stopdesign.com.

He assured me that this will happen, so I'm waiting on the email back for confirmation. The lesson to be learned in this scenario is to always be aware of the influencers regardless of if you think they're influential or not. Greg probably didn't realize that a random guy in a CC list on an email would be able to jump on the first page of results of Google within a day, but that's what happens in the tech world when somebody is wronged — they will make sure that they are heard and heard loudly. Regardless of if he appends that text in the footer of his site or not, I can assure you he won't take bloggers for granted if such an event happens again. That's what running a business is all about — learning from your mistakes.

Comments are open :)

Phark Ads

I just added in some Yahoo ads to this blog to test it out. I've never messed with them before, so this will be fun to see how everything works :)

Motorola iTunes Phone Speculation

Alright Apple, time for you to hear what I'm about to say.

I know that in about a week, your master and commander will stand on a stage at the Moscone Center in San Francisco and try to make your news sound really cool, really futuristic, and really worthy of my consumer dollars. You will announce multiple products, however the big news of the day will be the announcement of the new "iTunes phone" which might end up to be a regularly-designed Motorola phone with iTunes syncing software on it. My friend Engadget just told me that he heard it was only supposed to hold 100 songs, which is around the same number my iPod shuffle currently holds. What a shame if that's true.

What Apple Can Do To Take My Money

Design the phone, don't let anyone else do it. AppleInsider wrote about what the new phone was purported to look like, however they updated the post saying that it was just a development mule, and damn I hope so. Unfortunately, most of the rumor sites around are saying that the vanilla-looking Motorola phone being shoveled around the net is the real deal, but my fingers are crossed. My fingers are crossed that the cellphone released next week looks like the speculated iPhone prototype referenced at the business2blog, and shown next to this paragraph.

This magical phone that probably won't get designed/developed/produced — what features should it include? Well, considering I'll be one of the first 200 people in America to purchase it (I bought the iPod shuffle less than 2 minutes after the Apple Store came back online, and had it overnight first priority shipped ..... yeah, I'd say I'm an early adopter) I'm going to need some hot whiz-bang stuff to really get me to whip out the plastic:

It'll need Bluetooth, obviously syncing capabilities with iTunes via USB or Bluetooth, a camera that takes at least 640x480 pictures, an expandable media slot similar to SD where I can jam at least 512MB into it, a way to sync with OS X that isn't confounded, and a nice interface. I'm not too keen on the default Motorola interface, so a nice, little, mobile version of Mac OS X on there would be slick, or even just some tight icons designed by Apple's design team.

I've heard rumors that Cingular will be the ones carrying it, and that's fine by me. Better them than Sprint at least. I was a Sprint PCS customer from 1999 to 2004, and am now a Verizon guy. Fortunately for me, my Verizon contract is up soon, so making the switch to Cingular would be a no-brainer if the Apple phone I imagine will be on that service.

Price? I really don't know. How about this: I sign up for a one-year agreement with Cingular, buy the $49 plan, and then you'll give me the phone for $200-250. That sounds about right. Or maybe I have no idea, whatever, I'll probably buy it regardless.

I Got A New Digital Camera, And It's Smaller Than Yours

My old Flickr photos were taken with my Dad's Sony Cybershot, so when I had to give it back to him, no more new photos! Fortunately, I scraped together enough money to purchase a new camera, and it just happens to fit inside of a Zippo Lighter. It's tiny, and it takes tiny pictures (640x480) — perfect for quick shots and easy uploads to the web. Behold, the 007 James Bond Stealth Camera. $100 $80 at ThinkGeek, go cop one!

Check out all the cool new photos up on my Flickr page, which just happens to be under my "himike" username. Aww baby.

Apple Updates Make Me Happy

With so much stuff goin' down in Cali/
It's kinda hard being stuck here at RIT/
But I, somehow someway/
Keep buying new hot Apple products like every single day!

After Economics and lunch with friends, I was pulling into my parking lot and it finally hit me that "Oh my god! The Keynote!!!! Macworld!!!!!! Apple stuff!!!!!!!!" so as soon as I jumped onto my computer I fired up the MacRumors IRC chat coverage live from California and found out the good news. Apple's new product lineup honestly blew me away, and I actually picked up a new iPod shuffle 512MB for a smidgen over $100 including tax. My reasoning is that I'll get the shuffle to take to the gym and quick trips, I'll sell my 4th gen 20GB iPod, and then purchase an iPod Mini for longer trips. I only use like 6GB of my iPod's current capacity because I hate having music on there I wouldn't want to listen to if it magically came up in shuffle, so I'm always removing songs from my playlist.

Stuff that fits in my jeans pockets without bulges always makes me want to buy it, so I just couldn't resist!

And check out a design one guy thought would be similar to what Apple put together today. Thanks Alex!

Apple iHome, iPhone, iCaramba!

I forgot where I found this gallery of images but it is supposed to be the sub-$500 iMac-type offering from Apple that so many rumor sites have been touting the past few weeks — the one where the rumor scoop got ThinkSecret sued and not just cease-and-desisted. Here's a link to the full gallery (10 pictures and a video) and you can also click on this image as well:

Faked Type

You can't fool a type geek. Apple's corporate font is a version of Myriad Pro, and this is a pretty good fake of Myriad, but it's not the real thing. The biggest giveaway is the end of the letter 'e' being vertical, where in the real Myriad it's slightly slanted, so this kinda looks like Fruitiger or something. That, plus you can see the sides of the sheet of paper that the guy simply attached to a pizza box with some writing on it. Oh, and in one of the photos the text isn't even centered with the handle.

If It's True

Now the coolest thing about this new headless Mac is that you can now pair it with a sub-$1000 20" Apple Cinema Display and your cost is comparable to that of a mid-range G5 iMac. Whether or not people will get the headless G4 (if it *is* really a G4 in that little pizza box, but one can assume based on the heat generated from G5 processors) and a nice display over the iMac has yet to be seen, and because of this, I'm not sure if the $499 price point will be true or not.

Just like when all the rumor mills said that the new iPod Mini will be $149 or so, and then it debuted at a benjamin past that everybody was so disappointed, I don't have much faith in the $499 price point. All the media outlets picked up on this story at the price displayed on the rumor sites, which for all intents and purposes could be pulled straight out of their ass like a lot of the information they give. I personally think it will be $100 past that for retail purchases, and $499 for educational buyers (like me for the next 6 weeks). At that pricing level, it would be economical for all PC campuses to scrap their Windowz boxes, hold on to their CRTs and LCDs they had with them, and just swap in a nice G4 headless iMac.

And I can't wait to get my hands on one of these bad boy iPhones. I'm the perfect consumer that they're gunning for — one who's willing to switch cellphone services just to use this new Apple/Motorola phone that syncs with iTunes. Too bad the following mockup was shot down as false, cause it looked really slick:

U.S. Missile Defense Doesn't Defend

Missile defense systems failed to pick up a test missile originating from Kodiak, Alaska because of what was said to be a slight malfunction right before launch.

I worked on missile defense systems this past summer, and I promise this wasn't my fault!

PayPal? More like PayEnemy

So I need to get money from clients and advertisers, but nope, my PayPal account access is randomly limited as of a week ago. If they suspect any "fraudulent activity" (not defined anywhere on the PayPal site, but if it means "sending and receiving amounts of money around $1500" then I guess I'm a huge fraud), they automatically lock it down and you cannot accept nor send money without jumping through some hoops. What hoops you say? Well! Let me tell you!

PayPal says that they need to "further identify who I am", so obviously my checking account number, credit card number, social security number, home address and telephone, and debit/ATM card numbers are not enough to validate my identity. Because of this lock-down, I need to do two things: 1) fax them a specific cover page that they generate, and 2) accept a call from PayPal to a phone number that is associated with a credit card address on file. Now, let me explain to you why those two things are very difficult for me.

1) I don't have a fax machine, nor do I know of anyone on campus who has one, so I'd have to drive a few miles down the road to Kinkos (by the way, where is the nearest Kinkos, because I have no freakin' clue) and it'd be a major hassle. Okay, so the fax thing isn't so difficult, but wait, it gets better.

2) Now, I'd gladly accept a call from PayPal to my cellphone, which is my only means of phone communication, but it doesn't work like that — it has to be a landline phone connected to the address your credit card company has on file. This is difficult for me, because my credit card billing address is still in Virginia where I was this summer. Having an address in Virginia isn't bad, because I don't even get billing statements anymore and everything's online. Unfortunately, that sucks in this situation because the only phone call PayPal will accept is from the phone from the house in Virginia, which by the way, no one who lives there actually uses, and it may be disconnected! God, I love technology.

I called PayPal to see if there was anything I could do besides these two things, and after being on hold for 45 minutes, I was greeted by a cheery bloke who told me I simply needed to send an email explaining the situation to appeal@paypal.com and they would take care of it within hours. I sent that address an extremely detailed email, and yup, I did get a response back in a few hours. It was an automated response from PayPal telling me that "appeal@paypal.com" is not a valid customer service address, and to call PayPal if I needed more help. Thanks a lot.

So right now you may be asking yourself, "Self, how come Mike doesn't just change the address on file for his credit card company to where he is right now?" and the answer is this: if I did that, I'd have to change the billing profile for everything in this world of capitalism that bills me every month, like, for example, Basecamp, Verizon, TypePad, MediaTemple (which, by the way, sucks and has had over 4 hours of downtime in the past 5 days alone), and a host of other crap.

Okay, so to recap, PayPal imposed an account restriction on me to help me get away from account fraud even though I asked for no such restriction. And while I'm under this restriction, I'm losing money I desperately need to receive and send. To lift myself from this restriction, I need to accomplish two random tasks that are impossible given my current situation. Hey, PayPal! Thanks a ton!

Real Encryption: A Mathematical Case Study

We had a discussion in my Ethics class about encryption, and it really amused me to hear how many people think that maximum strength encryption doesn't matter and that our government has the technology to break (in a reasonable amount of time) any encryption scheme. I started thinking more about it, and I thought that I would do a little mathematical case study regarding basic cryptographic concepts, and show what "real encryption" means and the power people actually have.

First, something that everyone reading this must realize before I continue. I can write a Java code snippet in about a half-hour that can encrypt a text file that no government on this planet could decrypt in less than a hundred years. The idea that "big brother" is always around us, and has futuristic technology able to break all encryption schemes is completely false, and here is the proof.

Background Information

When your bank says that its online software uses 128-bit encryption, that means that it uses a 128 bit long password (or "key") to encode your information during transfer. 128 bits equals 16 characters (16 bytes, ASCII encoding), therefore 128-bit encryption uses a 16 character randomly-generated password. Each character in this password can use all 128 different ASCII characters, which includes all numbers, punctuation, spaces, and letters in the English alphabet (plus some additional characters). 1024-bit encryption is based on a 128 character long password (1024/8 = 128), and so on. Because we are using ASCII encoding, every single slot in the 128 character long password can have 128 different possibilities, so a password that is n characters long has 128 ^ n different combinations possible.

Hypothetical Situation

Imagine a 1,000,000 node cluster of 2.0 Ghz PCs, all clumped together for the sole purpose of brute-force hacking encrypted files. Now say the CIA is using the full computing power of this million-node cluster to go through every single permutation of your password in order to break your encryption scheme. This hypothetical situation will be used for the rest of this case study, so remember those numbers.

A 2 Ghz processor can perform 2 million operations per second (if you assume one operation per clock cycle, we are approximating this because I don't want to confuse anyone). We will assume that the CIA is using special software that can check through one full permutation to see if it works during every clock cycle (this is a huge if), so this means that every second, every node, is moving through 2,000,000 possible combinations and trying to match it against the cypher text. We have one million nodes, so every second, 2,000,000,000,000 (2 trillion permutations, or 2 x 10^12) are being tested to see if they work.

2,000,000,000,000 * 60 seconds * 60 minutes * 24 hours * 365 days = 6.3 x 10^19 possible permutation tries every year. That seems like a hell of a lot of different combinations of letters, but if you do the math, regular 128-bit encryption with a 16 character password has 128^16 different combinations. This equates out to 5.19 x 10^33 to be exact, which would take almost two years of brute-force hacking to crack.

Beyond 128-bit Encryption

In the first paragraph, I said that I could write an algorithm to do this, and I can. By using symmetric XOR encryption, one of the simplest encryption techniques, and a randomly-generated password of sufficient length (we'll work with 1024-bit encryption for this — 128 bytes, or 128 characters), we can use a little math to see just how long it will take to decrypt this home-made encryption.

By using Google, we can see that there are 5.28 x 10^269 different combinations with a 128 character password. By dividing that number by the million node number we found before, we see that it will take roughly 8 x 10^249 years before we can crack that encryption using the world's largest clustered computing structure, very fast computers, and with 100% uptime.

So here is the power you have: a 10-line code snippet you write can encrypt a data file so tightly, that it would take more years to decrypt it — with current technology — than have passed since the inception of the universe at the Big Bang. Now when you have something that you really need to be private, think of this post, and then get yo crypto on.

A Short List of Things Windows Does Better than Mac OS X

Unsurprisingly, the Department of Defense and its contractors use Windows, so that means I have been stuck on a Windows box all this summer while at work. My first Macintosh was a Performa 6200CD, so I've been a Mac guy for a long time so using Windows everyday has made me think about some things. In no particular order, here are the things I've noticed that Windows does a better job at than Mac OS X (10.3 Panther):

Window Resizing

I have a 1.8Ghz (single processor) G5 at home, and sometimes when I resize windows (of any size or complication-level) the system lags a bit. It lags about 100 times less than any other Mac I've owned, but it's not instantaneous. The PC I'm on right now is an older IBM box that can't be running past 800Mhz, however, Windows must be optimized for the resizing of windows because it freakin' flies whenever I grab and move the bottom-right corner. Photoshop, Firefox, UltraEdit, it doesn't matter — they all resize in real-time with my mouse movements.

Menubar Interaction

Just like with the window resizing, menus drop down (I'm using Win2000, not XP) extraordinarily fast. Much faster than on my G5, which ticks me off because I can't think of anything I do more with my time than select menu options in applications.

Microsoft Office

Granted Microsoft Office + Windows is Redmond's bread and butter, but it still upsets me that Office 2004 on OS X sucks so bad. I don't care about all the fancy new features and how people love them, I care about the user experience in what I do most when I use Microsoft Office — type and edit text in Microsoft Word. Because Word was never ported over to Cocoa for Mac OS X, the carbon-rendered text looks absolutely revolting and I seriously cannot stand to look at a screen full of text in Word when using my Mac. The anti-aliasing is off just enough to make it look like garbage. Don't believe me? Start typing in 14px Georgia and prepare to find a garbage bag quickly.

Well, that's it. The rest of Windows sucks and the Mac experience is better, but those three points tick me off really bad. Hey Steve, you've got some work left to do for Tiger so get on it!

iLove my iPod

If you remember from a previous entry, I bought one of the new 20GB Apple iPods a few minutes after they announced them early Monday morning. I had it FedEx Express Overnight shipped to me, and it arrived Noon yesterday at my house, so I think it's safe to say I'm one of the first people in the country with one of the new ones :)

I've never owned an iPod before, and have only played with one for like 30 seconds before this, so I wanted to list some of my reactions as a new iPod owner.

First Thoughts

The backlight is awesome. I set it to turn on/off 2 seconds after my last button push, and the way it goes from dark to light is really amazing. It's like a gradient of light, I can't explain it, it's cool.

The earplug/headphones suck. Maybe I have narrow ear canals or something, but the ear plugs just don't work for me. They irritate, and they fall out — two things that I will not put up with. I used to be a DJ so I'm used to headphones that put grapefruit hemispheres on either side of your head, so this was definitely a foreign area for me. So I went to BestBuy and bought some Aiwa HP-X223 headphones (see picture). For about $30, they improved the sound quality tenfold, I highly recommend them.

It actually fits in my pocket! Even though Jobs is always pimping the fact that the iPod can fit in your pocket, I never really believed him until now. Granted, my 20GB version is 1mm thinner than old 20GB versions, and is definitely thinner than the 40GB version, but it's really really tiny.

The packaging it came in is astounding. I know others have recognized Apple's iPod packaging as a superior effort, but I never appreciated it until I opened it the very first time. It comes in a nice little square, that opens up and spreads out in front of you. Each part is packaged individually and perfectly, and unwrapping it all felt like I was unwrapping an expensive Coach purse. If you know what I'm talking about, then you know what I mean :)

Other iPod Uses

Now that I spent close to $300 for this small little toy, I need to make it worth my money. If all the iPod could do was play songs, then I'd kick myself in the ass for paying that much for it. I've always wanted a PDA, but now that PDAs are all crazy fancy with video cameras and internet connections, I'm glad the iPod has the basic PIM functionality built-in. I'm really looking forward to syncing my iPod with my iCal calendar — I'm always looking to find new ways of becoming more organized. I wish it had a calculator though, I guess I'll still have to use my cellphone for that.

I used to do my best thinking when I was driving through Nowhere, Ohio at 4am while hopped up on caffeine pills — I came up with my greatest ideas then, and always would have to pull over to write them down. I think my next purchase may be a Griffin iTalk recorder so I can talk to myself while on long car trips. Also it would be handy to record classes I sleep through :)

Do you use your iPod in any cool or unique ways? Have any suggestions for me? Oh, and know any good music? Now that I have 20GB I might have to fill it on up :)

New iPod + New Design

After I get out of work, I'm usually off gallivanting around and don't check NetNewsWire to see the latest news of the afternoon and evening. I fired it up on Saturday night, however, to see everybody and their brother (Note: Paul is not Kottke's brother) writing about the new iPods coming to town this week. After the initial wave of enthusiasm crashed to shore, I read some more about them on MacRumors (if you're a Mac fan you have to read MacRumors, no question) to find out that they were going to be released Monday (today).

I visited Apple's website an hour ago, and impulsively threw down my credit card and bought a 20GB one on the spot.

Since I'm a student, I qualified for a nice discount to bring the price from $299 down to $269, which offset the tax and FedEx super-fast-overnight-shipping. I have just over 2GB of music on my computer, so I'm by no means a hardcore music downloader, but ya know what? What kind of Apple fanatic am I without the ubiquitous white icon sitting in my hand?

I probably won't use it for the normal stuff — on my commute to work, while walking around, etc. What I'm planning on doing is connecting it to the Pioneer head unit I have in my car via RCA cables, so I can switch to the "Aux" mode on my deck, and have the iPod play through that. Friends of mine say they love the Griffin iTrip which lets you play your iPod tunes over FM to your stereo, but I'm pretty concerned with the quality loss. I hate listening to the radio, and I don't want my songs (most of which are 192Kbps or higher) to sound like an FM station.

Umm, this site looks different

Sometime on Saturday it hit me that the black and red combination was burning a hole directly through my retinas and into my frontal lobe. I have no idea how I could stand it for so long, but it's gone, and it's not coming back.

My buddy Mike hooked me up with a hot woodgrain texture late last night, so I decided to weave it into some kind of a new design. The only thing that won't be changing on this current design is the top logo/header... everything else will be changing. Let me repeat, I understand that most of this site is ugly as sin right now, but yours truly is on top of the situation and workin' his magic.

Times are a changin'. Stay tuned!

1680x1050 Resolution

I've never made so much money before in my entire life as I'm making right now this summer. This isn't some ego-boosting trip, I'm just mentioning that so when I talk about stuff I want to buy you realize that the cash is burning a virtual hole through my bank account online and the fire is almost unbearable. That being said, here's my plan.

I'm going to sell my current LCD monitor and my G4 Powerbook, and buy a 20" Apple Cinema Display.

Right now I have a 17" Philips LCD (DVI + VGA!!!!) display that I bought in the beginning of April. It was originally $475, and I was pretty impressed that it didn't have any dead pixels (it still doesn't) because cheap displays usually do. It's really a great monitor and I'm still impressed by it, but when Steve introduced the new displays I realized I had to have one. You know about a guy and his toys, once the mind is made-up, there's nothing you can do.

In order to pay for the new monitor ($1169 after my academic discount) I have to sell my little baby — my 15" TiBook I got my freshman year. It has served me well, but now that I'm spoiled by the G5, the allure of "Photoshopping anywhere" is lost behind the cloud of "wow, this Powerbook is WAY slower than my desktop computer". So no more Panera computing, no more sitting on the couch in my apartment with Chad and gawking at his 17" Powerbook while we both write CSS. That's okay, these are all sacrifies I'm willing to make... I mean did you look at how sweet the new display is?

I won't be selling either of these items until mid-August, however, let me give you some specifications regarding the Powerbook in case you — oh faithful reader — would like to purchase it from me. It is a second-generation G4 Titanium Powerbook: 550Mhz processor, 512MB of memory, 20GB hard drive, with a self-installed Airport (802.11b, not g) card. It has some "titanium" paint flaking off of the edges (like all TiBooks from a few years ago), and a little bit of left-corner-deformity from when I slipped on ice in a parking lot and it hit the ground (from within a case, which absorbed about 99.99% of the damage). The corner is a little dinged up, but everything still works perfectly. Now for all of you web designers out there, here's the kicker: the Powerbook is signed by Jeffrey Zeldman!. I hung out with him in Albany two years ago, and concocted a plan by which I would force him to sign my Powerbook muhahaha. Actually, he thought it was really cool of me to ask him, and felt honored. So it says "Mike: Stay cool. JZ" on the front cover, right next to the Apple logo :)

The monitor is not currently up for sale, but the laptop is. The asking price is $900, but I am willing to drop it a little lower if people think it's a tad high. If you are interested, do not leave a comment proclaiming so on this entry. Instead, please send me an email. My goal is to post some pictures on this entry of the computer and stuff, but I get awful busy after I get home from work. If you send me an email asking for pictures, I will most definitely reply to you with the pictures — but if I don't get around to posting them on this entry for a day or two, please don't be upset :)

Popular Information Retrieval

I know you've said to yourself before: "Self, where in world did Kottke find the link to that weird movie? How come Boing Boing is rockin' the cool links, and I never find anything cool? Why is it that my linklog feels more like a news story regurgitator than a fresh treasure box?" I know how you feel, I've been there, and am usually "still there". So I'm going to give out some hints on how I find interesting websites and where I find them.

Hit the news sites

I visit the Drudge Report and CNN all day long. But in the past few weeks, I've changed my news aggregating ways so that I can breeze through more information, more quickly. In my feed reader of choice, I have a folder that is dedicated solely to news RSS feeds. I have every RSS feed listed on the Reuters syndication page, most of the Bloomberg RSS feeds (you can find them on MyRSS), and some other news sites. But those are just the tip of the iceberg.

Gettin' random wit it

I love to check out del.icio.us to see what other prople find facinating today. For beginners, I recommend the "popular" page which lists the most frequently linked webpages for the past 24 hours. From there, you can find the link to the Popular RSS feed, which is another feather in your fresh content finding cap. If you are addicted to information like me, you can subscribe to del.icio.us RSS feeds straight from the categories you find interesting: like funny, cool, business, design, and many others. These are updated constantly throughout the day, so make sure to keep your aggregator open at all times!

Blog aggregators

Blogdex is an amazing resource to find out what the blog world is into at the moment. I found out about the Weblogs.com meltdown almost a day before everyone else in the blogosphere did because of judicious Blogdex surfing. Once you find something interesting, "Track the Site" to find out who else thinks it's cool as well. Find out what they had to say about it, who else they linked to, who links to them, who commented, and so on. You'll be amazed at the information you can find only a few levels of separation away from the source.

Blogosphere RSS

I can't tell you how many hundreds of RSS feeds from weblogs I subscribe to, but generally it is all the most popular ones. I like subscribing to Comment feeds as well, because then I can find "new people" from which to find information. The feed list is constantly changing, because I delete and subscribe to feeds all the time.

Basically, that is where I find my information. News sites, geek sites, blogs, design sites, aggregators, and bookmark sites — I'm definitely an infoslut. Separating the cream from the crap is a small price to pay to find interesting stories, and once you get linked from a site like Slashdot or MeFi, you'll find that all the pain was worthwhile.

Apple to Arlo Rose and Konfabulator: Screw You!

Apple released a bevy of new goodies today, namely huge displays and a preview of OS 10.4 Tiger. Displays were cool, some features of Tiger were cool, but other features of Tiger will most likely spawn lawsuits. As Arlo said as a parody of the WWDC banners: Cupertino, start your photocopiers!

Konfabulator is a Javascript/XML runtime engine that lets you run mini-applications written in JavaScript called "widgets" on your desktop. These are easy to code, can use fancy PNG images and transparency effects, and can basically do whatever you want. They can pull in web data, they can interact with your applications, they can run Perl or shell scripts on your computer if you let them, and a whole slew of other stuff. The coolest part is that average Joe's (okay, not average Joe's, but people with a small hint of a programming background) can develop their own widget that does exactly what they want it to do, and then boom, productivity enhanced ten-fold.

Example Widget I Developed
Just as an example, back when I used to drive to my ex-gf's place in Chicago from Rochester, NY all the time, I developed a widget that aided my journey. It was a US map that displayed only the section of the country that I drove through (NY -> Illinois by way of I-90), and the weather for each place on my journey. Say it's 6pm right now. I programmed the widget to know it takes me 3.5 hours from Rochester to get to Cleveland, so it would display Cleveland's weather 3.5 hours from now on my desktop. It would do this for all the major cities on my way, so I could know what type of weather to expect. And the best part is that it wasn't complicated, but filled a little niche that happened to be really useful for me! Konfab is great for little stuff like that. This widget is at home on my other computer, so I can't post code, sorry!

Dashboard vs. Konfabulator

Steve Jobs announced today Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, which included the aforementioned Dashboard feature. From what was demoed today, the Dashboard is a way for little mini-applications (Steve used the term "widgets", just like Konfab does) to fly-in from off the screen ala Exposé and let the user do little tasks with them. The Dashboard featurette website shows a few sample applications, namely: a calendar, stock ticker, iTunes controller, a movie viewer, etc. So what's the big deal?

Dashboard copied Konfabulator's look, feel, concept, and terminology, without so much as a reference.

Konfab is currently at version 1.7, which is a very stable and mature release. The memory that the runtime engine takes up keeps dropping with each successive version, and the number of home-made and user-developed widgets grows every single day. Konfabulator came out a few years ago, and I've been using it religiously for about 8 months now. I don't know what I'd do without it.

Arlo and the Macintosh Community

Arlo Rose is the main developer of Konfabulator (along with Perry Clarke) and is well-known throughout the Mac community for developing amazing third-party software. Back in the days before OS X, Arlo developed an application called Kaleidoscope which let you install themes for the ho-hum Mac OS 9 (and 8, I believe) user interface. If you were a Mac user back then, there is no way in the world you don't remember Kaleidoscope. Before developing that software, he worked for Apple Computer on their Copland user interface team (remember Copland? c'mon guys!). Yup, he's got lots of history with Apple, and many of the things that look cool on your desktop right now may have gotten their start with the work that Arlo did back in the day.

Apple and 3rd Party Developers

Unlike Microsoft who tends to buy out their competitors if they like what they see, Apple sometimes blatantly rips-off quality Macintosh software and includes it in the next major OS release. Karelia Software's Watson application is just another example of this. It aggregated web content before the term "aggregation" was cool. It let you search movie times, books, recipes, weather, and lots of other stuff without leaving your desktop. Apple decided to copy the application (user interface and all) and deem it "the next version of Sherlock". Sound familiar?

Watson was officially sold to Sun. Via Kottke.

My Personal Take

After reading through the Konfabulator forum posting regarding this very issue, and seeing some disheartening comments from what-could-be-thought-of as loyal Konfabulator users, I'd like to publicly state my stand on this issue. I am extraordinarily upset at Apple for doing this, and will be boycotting the usage of the new Dashboard once Tiger is released in about 9 months. I will be immediately purchasing my license for Konfabulator, and will strive to spread the word to non-Konfab users about this issue. I will evangelize the usage of Konfab even to Windows users (since Arlo is reportedly working very hard on a Windows version of Konfabulator). I will do everything in my power to see some justice come from this injustice.

Hey Apple, you just lost a ton of my respect.

Dynamic JavaScript Navigation

Time to finish up what I started.

I present for your approval: Dynamic Tree-Structured Navigation written in JavaScript

Now this is not some high-tech government technical thing like you may all be thinking... oh wait, it is :) I took out pretty much everything that could give away any associated meaning, so all that is left is the navigation menu. That's it. It's a big navigational menu. Trust me.

What?

Imagine a massive, tree-like, hierarchical navigational system — you know, like a large DOM tree or XML file. This script stuffs that array (four-dimensional in this case) into a JavaScript data structure, and then draws the navigation on-the-fly by parsing it.

Why?

The array is easier to update than, say, 500 individual HTML files. And because one of the requirements for this particular project is that the entire website is self-contained, I couldn't do any of the script stuff on the backend, which explains why it's all in JavaScript.

Whhaaaat?

It uses a collapse/expand type of architecture like many other DHTML menus. This saves browser space, and can fit a lot of information into a tighter area. Some file icons have a checkmark next to them, if you view the source, you'll notice that you can specify two different types of bottom-level files (in this case, a regular document, and a quiz). It makes it a bit more useful in situations that I probably didn't even think of.

This took me about two and a half days at work, and it definitely would have taken me less than a day if the last time I looked at JavaScript wasn't like 8 months ago. Ofcourse I write PHP all the time, so adapting syntax back to client-side stuff was a breeze :)

I actually put some thought into the copyright notice at the top of the page (in the source code) in light of what happened to Joshua and his cool tabbed navigation. I realize that you could theoretically do whatever the hell you want with the code and not tell anyone I originally wrote it, but please be nice and respect the rules I wrote. They're not that brutal :)

Free Java Code

So right after I say that I'm not a developer, I get the urge to post some source code to my weblog — go figure.

Anyway, I took a few Java classes back my freshman year and kicked some serious butt in them, I got into Java bigtime. All the code that I wrote for those classes is still saved on my hard drive, and I'll be releasing it into the public domain at some point in the future. Until then, here are some samples that I thought were particularly cool.

mRAH One-Way Hash

I've always been into cryptography, and this was the first pseudo-algorithm I developed. It uses a series of base-changing and bit-shifting methods to obfuscate the plaintext, and to be honest, I don't even know what it does anymore :) But here it is nonetheless: mRAH.java.txt.

Counting Numerical Palindromes

I saw a poster on the wall of a classroom talking about some "TopCoder" challenge — basically a competition for Java coders. I didn't officially enter the contest, but decided to still write the code.

Basically, you had to write a public method that took in, and spit out, an int less than 10000. What it did was count the number of numerical palindromes between 0 and n. We're talking numbers like 545, 55, and 9889. I can't remember if I had to discount single-digit numbers or not, but oh well, here it is: MirrorImage.java.txt.

Oh, all this code is now in the public domain and can be messed with however you want without giving me any credit. Go crazy :)

Traversing a Four Dimensional, Tree-Structured Navigational Array Without Recursion

Expect this post sometime today Monday if because the coding gods are with me :)

Update: So it's Monday, and the code that I've been working on (that this weblog post references) is complete and working in its final state. Sweet!

Unfortunately, I've been told the code I wrote is classified. I knew the project was classified information, but didn't think the code would be too. Stupid Department of Defense and their stupid security :)

Sorry guys.

IMPORTANT Safari Bug

I just wanted to link people who read this site to Liz Lawley's description of an extraordinarily important Safari security flaw.

Another super-important link you should check out is McSweeney's Daily Reason to dispatch our President. Scary stuff in there.

I'm Connected

I had a lot of time on my hands while driving back from my main man MO's place, so instead of contemplating the universe and solving whirrled peas, I was simply thinking about how easy it is for people to get in touch with me.

So basically, I'm on a generic instant messenger client every moment of every day. When I'm not currently at my computer, you can tell how long I've been away from it (say, 15 minutes). Then if you get really inquisitive, you can check my away message and find out exactly where I am, and usually when I'll be back.

If knowing "when I'll be back" isn't enough, you can call my cellphone. If I don't pickup or leave it in my car (like usual, stupid me) then you can leave a voicemail which I'll receive the instant I see my cellphone once again. Still not good enough?

You can send me an email. If I forgot to fire-up my messaging client, and if my cellphone is on silent, most likely I'm in front of a computer somewhere (either my place, or in the labs, or whatever), and I'll be checking my email feverishly just in case something important lands there. And if none of those work, here's what you do.

Leave a comment on my weblog. Not only will it show up at the top of the homepage indicating you recently commented, but I check my weblog for recent comments wherever I am. Make it say something completely off-topic like "MIKE YOU IDIOT... you were supposed to meet me at Chili's a half-hour ago, where are you?" so I pick up on it right away and call your cellphone.

And if none of those work, and you're not really in a rush to contact me, feel free to send me a postcard. I may forget to pickup my mail for a few days, but I'm sure sometime in the next week I'll get it and promptly forget to call you for a few days. But that's just me.

Video Conferencing Magic

I really can't believe that just happened. My supafly roommate Chad just hooked up his new DV Camcorder to his laptop, and started streaming video over the web! Here's what you need to do it (Mac version):

• Camcorder with either Firewire or USB output to your computer
• QuickTime Broadcaster — read about it at Apple's website (free)
• Broadband internet connection

Now here's the sequence of events:

1. Plug-in your camcorder to your computer
2. Fire up Quicktime Broadcaster
3. Go to Network settings and choose Automatic Unicast
4. Email me (mike at phark dot net) for RIT's Streaming Server address so you can steal their bandwidth
5. Go to town!

Check out the picture I captured from a video stream from Matthew's house:

Man, I love technology!

Update: We will be streaming our next poker match over the internet, so stay tuned for the day and time!

1.8 Ghz

I am now the proud parent of a 1.8Ghz G5 PowerMac. It has a 160GB serial ATA harddrive, a gig of RAM (PC3200 baby!), and a completely unnecessary DVD-burning SuperDrive. I wasn't even looking at a new desktop computer, but Apple had a fantastic deal on a refurbished, single-processor 1.8 that was too good to pass up.

So I've got Panther installed on it (flawless, I might add), and have one question to pose to all three of you who are reading this: Can a computer's performance get any faster than instantaneous? No, seriously.

I double-click Safari, and after half-a-bounce in the dock, the app is open and my homepage is loaded. I open Microsoft Word, and BOOM, it's loaded. The computer starts up at least 5 times faster than any other computer I've ever used, and then logs me in under 10 seconds.

I can't even imagine what the DP 2.0 Ghz version must be like; what is the JND (just noticable difference) between a 1.8 Ghz processor, and a 2.0? Is there one? Can you tell the difference with everyday tasks? Is it worth the money?