So, after my recent rant about FriendFeed suckage, why am I now giving you my FriendFeed url? Eh…experimentation, mostly. Plus, Twitter is pretty broken right now, and it’s my primary off-the-cuff commenting tool. Since it’s not working well, I figured I’d give FriendFeed a quick run across the dance floor in the meantime.

I’ve still got some reservations about FriendFeed, but it’s API seems open and robust enough (unlike, say, Facebook’s) that I can have some fun and learn something with it. We’ll see…I’ve already learned quite a bit playing around with the Planet Ken stuff. I see the value of the social networking components…I just feel a lot of tension when it comes to the control and data portability issues.

Speaking of social networking and it’s consequences; I also just finished a great G’Day World podcast today from back in March, where Cameron re-interviews Jamais Cascio. Their primary topic of conversation is a fascinating bit of work Jamais did for SXSW this year, for a panel called Futurists’ Sandbox: Scenarios for Social Media, 2025.. His concept of The Chorus is quite mind-boggling, yet arguably quite a straightforward extrapolation. Definitely give the G’Day World podcast a listen.

Really nifty Google Code 20% project: Radish – a indoor solar-powered calendar display. Yep…indoor solar power; it uses so little energy that a solar cell charged by indoor lighting keeps it running, allows it to radio in (via ZigBee / 802.15.4) and get updated schedule info, and refresh the screen. I mean…damn!! Nice project, dude.

And last but not least…near the end of the video, the narrator jokingly suggests that the engineer (Aaron Spangler) could hook him up with a hack to let him trump any conference room reservation on demand. Aaron laughs, shrugs, and says …sure. Put in a ticket. I think my DBA peeps will appreciate THAT one!

If you’re a last.fm user, you should definitely check out LastGraph. It’s an amazing data visualization site that pulls in last.fm listening data and produces rich, fascinating graphics based on your listening history. I’m poking about in my own stream, and it’s really cool to watch the ebb and flow of my listening habits. Check it out!

One of the newest episodes of Boing Boing tv features Cory Doctorow dialing in from his Little Brother U.S. signing tour. I’m enjoying it, so I thought I’d toss it in the pot for those of you who don’t frequent Boing Boing tv:

In a romp around Wikipedia this evening, I bumped into a link to an really nice interview with Jo Walton, the author of the books Farthing and Ha’penny (among others) that I’ve ranted so much about recently. The interview requires a subscription to The Internet Review of Science Fiction, but they have a Casual level that is free as in beer. Note: I think they’re probably worth an actual paid subscription, though. Looks pretty nice. I like SF review and commentary, and I think I can live w/ $15-25. *grin* (I say, I say…that’s a joke, for those missing it. Good writing makes 15 bucks look WAY cheap. This is a bargain.)

The interview is well worth reading. Jo Walton gives a great description of the background for Farthing, and I have even more respect for her now, as I hadn’t realized she was the instigator of
International Pixel-Stained Peasant’s Day. She has a lively discussion of the implications of said day with the interviewer as well. All in all, an excellent read.

I, like many geeky computer types, am addicted to caffeine. I’ve tried to wean myself off of it more than once…but it’s not pleasant. For me, or for those around me. So a few years ago, I gave up on giving it up, and just embraced the addiction.

Unfortunately, all was still not well. The flaw is the morning; I am simply not fit to be around until I’m at least somewhat caffeinated, but I don’t make coffee at home before I leave. So my co-workers…well, they put up with a very, very difficult to deal with Ken. I feel bad about it, but what to do? I like my sleep!

I finally got a clue. This week, I started taking a caffeine pill immediately when I get up, and it is working great. I’m less cranky, feel better by the time I get to the office, and I’m less of a strain on my co-workers. Win-win! I was reluctant to do this for a long while; I had an…incident…with caffeine pills back in the early ’90s (there IS a lethal dose of caffeine, but I only got halfway there). So I’d been a little skittish. But I’m a big boy now; I think I can handle it. *grin*

I was reading an article this morning on the new American Airlines luggage charge (THAT’s gonna go over well), and noticed an aside starting on page 3…Las Vegas is using RFIDs in outgoing luggage tags now to help move bags more efficiently.

Now, I’m not saying I’m even completely against this, used correctly…but I had no idea that it was occuring. THAT I don’t like…especially since I have a bag sitting in the hallway that just came back from Vegas! Checking…nope, no I’m an arphid note on it.

But oh yeah…it’s there:

Nice, eh? And I carried this around (out of airport, past who knows what kind of scanner, on transit, etc.) without knowing about it. And of course, they’re all already sync’d with a person’s ID directly. Hrrrmmmm.

And as for slippery slope…from the article: This new system “won’t solve every problem, but it’s certainly played a part in allowing this airport to operate efficiently,” she said, “and it’s got the potential to do even more once it’s rolled out [on] a wider basis.”

I bet it does.

UPDATE: to clarify, I changed “…in outgoing luggage now…” to “…in outgoing luggage tags now…” above, after the post made it onto boingboing (woot!). It was a typo, and the photos make it clear what I’m talking about, but apparently people thought it worth mentioning. *grin* Sorry for any confusion.

It’s nice to have choices. Really, it is. But sometimes it causes the actual, you know, DOING of stuff to lose traction. I’m working on a new webapp, and I spent several hours this weekend going over the pros and cons of various development models:

1. Standard dev model, presumably under Django (similar to kenzoid.com’s backend)
2. Semi-standard model, but with CouchDB backend (either Django or Paste for framework)
3. Some workable framework (either Python or Rails based) with Amazon Web Services for messaging and persistence
4. Google App Engine

The standard model would obviously get me up and running the fastest, but I’m really wanting to do some serious work with these dynamic-schema databases (which all of the other choices use). It’s always good when you can learn something new while building something useful, so I’ve been leaning away from #1. Both #2 and #3 are doable, but Google App Engine promised the best of most worlds…dynamic models, etc., plus a framework that I’m very familiar with (supports Python, and includes a hunk of Django templating and such). Plus, it’s the new toy on the block; I’m all about new toys at home! (at work, I’m a production DBA, so I do the pushback thing when new toys show up. DBAs are generally horribly conservative when it comes to new tech and implementation. It’s not that we’re just cranky, though (though that helps). It’s because when it breaks, WE get to keep both pieces, and put them back together, no matter who broke them! But trust me, dev types…I understand the attraction. *grin*)

So I’ve been wanting to choose GAE pretty badly. Problem is…I didn’t make it into the first 10,000 invites. Probably by a long shot; I didn’t hear about it for about 24 hours for some bizarre reason. So there’s some indeterminate amount of time that I have to wait until I could actually publish anything to the world. Note: doesn’t stop development; I’ve already downloaded and started working the the App Engine SDK. But the prospect of no firm date for deployment made me reluctantly push App Engine to the bottom of the pile.

While I was making that decision, I wasn’t reading my GMail, though. I got my invite yesterday!! Google App Engine…front and center! I’m hip deep in the docs now, and hope to have something usable fairly soon. And since Google’s doing the admin heavy lifting, I can leave my DBA hat at the day office. Yay! Updates soon, true believers.

So…I haven’t jumped on the latest geek bandwagon yet, friendfeed. Well…to be honest, I did go ahead and grab my namespace, but no subscriptions yet. And that’s because I resist the model. I like aggregation…but I don’t like delegating that unconditionally to an external service. I want to have control of my data, and control of my URIs, when possible. I learned this the hard way with earlier services, so I’ve been trying to determine the best way forward.

So the heck with it; I’m creating my own uber-feed. Planet Ken! I’m using the Planet framework; instead of aggregating a bunch of users of a project (Python, Debian, etc.), I’m instead aggregating my own feeds…my blog, twitterstream, flickrstream, etc. And then I’ll import that into friendfeed, to close the loop. But if they fold…I’m still around. Yeah, baby!

Don’t get me wrong…I may have a control issue here *grin*, and I realize there are things that friendfeed can do that my Planet can’t. (reputation, commenting, etc.) But that’s simply where we are today; I think those things also can potentially be distributed. I think that’s a good idea. But I can’t work on that without having a decoupled feed to start with, so it’s worthwhile.

Both Atom and RSS2.0 are of course available, as well as the straight-up page. I have no idea how this experiment will go, so please drop me a line if you have any comments. Thanks!

Yoikes! I neglected to mention Starfish, by the absolutely incomparable Peter Watts in my earlier recommendations post. I read Starfish some time ago as an ebook available (along with most of the rest of his backlist) directly from Watts himself. He does this beause he rocks, and he wants to make you into the sort of Watts fanboy I am. *grin*.

Be warned. Starfish is terrific science fiction, but it is…um….well…dark. Seriously. But it succeeds in doing what SF is supposed to do;it uses the premise and extrapolations to pose questions about us. About what we do to ourselves, about how society values us (and our failings), and about just how twisted and far we might fall if we don’t stop and think about what we’re doing. It’s a distressing read at times, but it’s so, so worth it. If you’re local, just ask and I’ll be happy to let you borrow it.