Beware the unmatched brace

I've been tinkering with the new WordPress Twenty Twelve responsive design template for a couple of other sites that I maintain. Given the increased use of mobile devices, such as phones and tablets, websites have to accommodate those smaller displays. Doing so with multiple style sheets for each possible configuration is possible but a testing and maintenance nightmare. Responsive design templates, where smart people figure out this stuff for us, are the easiest way to get to a good common solution.

The basic Twenty Twelve design, admittedly, is a bit bland. It has a quirk of placing the header image below the website title and tag line.
It also puts a box shadow, albeit faint, around the image.

I cloned the default template, moved the image above the title, and then set about to remove the box shadow. All that I'd need to do is reset the value of header-image in the style sheet.

img.header-image,
{
box-shadow:none;
}

WordPress offers a built-in style editor so that you can make changes to your design as you go.
In a simple case such as this, little can go wrong. If you are making a bunch of changes, however, you discover that it's easy for an extra character can wander in during a copy-and-paste editing session.
The code editor doesn't do syntax highlighting. As a result, if you leave an open curly brace:, the style sheet will fail silently and you've left with a simple change that doesn't work.

{
/* a bunch of code copied from elsewhere
that goes on for a while and then is missing a closing brace.
*/
img.header-image
{
box-shadow:none;
}

Tip: if you've spent what seems like an inordinate time tracking down a style change that's not working, copy your code into a proper editor and let it help you see what you're missing.

You got your Internet in my cheese.

You got your Internet in my cheese.
Thank you, I think.

The Internet of Things, Soon Accessible by Smartphone - Technology Review

A forthcoming packaging chip could let your phone talk to the plastic wrap on your cheese.

There will always be an England

These are the famous Flaming Tar Barrels of Otterly St. Mary. 

In brief, the townsfolk put tar in barrels, set the tar on fire, and carry the barrels around the town. Only local are permitted to carry the barrels, but the competition is open to men, women, and children.

They are worried that they're not able to raise enough money to keep the festival going.
Mark Steele describes the town and its carnival of flaming tar barrels in this BBC Radio 4 Extra show.

Blog tinkering

It's windy and cold outside, so it's a good day for tending to long overdue housekeeping chores on this blog. I've turned off email updates to help avert a flood of new posts and bizarre errors that we've seen in previous    tinkering sessions.

For some email subscribers, blog posts may be arriving through a new service, FeedBlitz. You'll have the usual options to adjust how frequently you receive the mailings and to unsubscribe if you so desire.
For those of you who care about such things, I've resumed with Blogger. I'll discuss the reasons for the change in a future post.

Thanks

Feeding birds by way of ice

A few weeks ago,we had small amount of snow and ice. We also did not have any sand or ice melt. Son Mike and his crew were making repairs on our house. Mike used bird seed to give some traction. It worked pretty well.
Last Monday, we had more ice, so I tossed more bird seed on the ramp and driveway. The ensuing warmth and rain washed away the ice, leaving the seeds. Birds large and small are taking care of the rest.

All the news that's fit to throw away

We get the Sunday-only option, currently costing $7.80/week. As with all print subscriptions, we also get their All Digital Access service, providing web, iPad app, and other mobile options, for no additional charge.
The All Digital Access costs $8.75/week.
To read the Times online on all of our gadgets, therefore, it is cheaper to buy the Sunday print edition and throw it away, rather than buy just the digital editions by themselves.


The New York Times recently sent a letter announcing new rates for print subscribers. Depending on your selection, a subscription will cost 40¢ to 70¢ more per week in the new year. Ours will increase to $8.20. The Gray Lady hasn't said whether there will be a price increase or not for the digital products.

More on Digital Nomads: Panera Bread

Panera Bread was one of the first restaurants to offer free Wi-Fi. It was a good thing. People would use the restaurant as adjunct office, holding meetings or just working for an hour or two. The restaurant would shorten the amount of time you could be connected during the busy lunch period, a condition that seems reasonable.
Of late, however, the Wi-Fi service has deteriorated to the point of dial-up quality.

Even in Leominster, where cell phone coverage is thin, my phone was getting better results on two-bar 4G service (921kbps) than on the store's Wi-Fi (896).
Add to that their use of Flash on the Wi-Fi login page and you have an unfriendly, unworkable setup.
Granted, we're supposed to go to restaurants to eat, not necessarily to work. If your business is offering an additional service as an attraction, it's a good idea to make it something you'd want to use. If you advertise air-conditioning, and can only keep the summertime temps at 80F, you're not delighting your customers.
Dunno where I'll try next, but I'm out of here.
By the way, the mall where the Leominster store is located is called the Mall at Whitney Fields, not the Searstown Mall. The mall was known as Searstown when it opened 45 years ago. It was renamed in 2004 when other anchor stores didn't want to be subservient to Sears.

More on answers

Picking up on Nicole's Answers thread.

About the Connecticut school shootings

A lot will be said about the recent tragedy in Connecticut. Most of it will be an expression of grief and bewilderment. Much of the commentary will be thoughtful and heartfelt. Some of it will be positioned, consciously or not, to advance an agenda. Intertwined with all of it will be observations from people whom we respect, but who are making statements that are passionate, stupid, and wrong. That's who we are, and that's how we have to live together.
Let me add just a couple of quick thoughts based on early and likely to be inaccurate information.

• It appears that the guns used in this shooting were purchased and owned legally by the assailant's mother (now dead by those same guns). Gun control legislation of a type that would pass muster under the recent Supreme Court rulings on the Second Amendment probably wouldn't have prevented these guns from being used in these crimes.
  There may be reasons for considering stronger gun control laws, but this case doesn't appear to be one of them.
• Much will be said about identifying people with mental illness in an effort to prevent future shootings. Our predictive powers regarding the behavior of anyone, mentally ill or otherwise, are nil. We have statistics that will show that a certain percentage of people who exhibit certain behaviors or who have been treated for certain conditions are likely to cause problems. There is, however, zero chance that we can then say with certainty that any specific individual matching that profile will offend.
  Two members of my extended family have done time in jail as the result of their mental illnesses, one for what he did and the other for what he said and that others feared he might do.
  
  • The one who did the crime did so as a complete surprise to all of us.
    
  • The one who said the wrong thing to the wrong person as the wrong time only learned how not to say those things to anyone, including a therapist, again.  Anyone who has been committed to a hospital under a Massachusetts Section 12 knows the magic words not to say. As a result, the person's illness goes underground even further.
  Even as we discuss identification of people likely to offend, we make it more difficult to get the kinds of sustained mental health and family services that might give us a chance to heal what is badly broken.  A person who kills his mother and her kindergarten class isn't going to be made whole by a Prozac presecription. 

There's no question that gun violence and mental illness are causing grave problems in our society. There's also no question that there are some things we can do to make things better. I keep thinking, though, about our invasion of Iraq. The Septemeber 11 attacks deserved a forceful response to confront terrorists in this world. That we chose, under the guise of responsing to 9/11, to invade and occupy Iraq squandered left us neglibly safer at a enormous cost of lives, money, and good will. 

I hope that we're better than that this time around.

More on Charter

You bring your laptop from home to work in a coffee shop. You connect to the Wi-Fi service, start the web browser to check the news, and then go to Outlook to check email. You read what's arrived and write a quick note to a friend to make plans for lunch next week.

Up pops this message:



A normal, English-speaking adult would see a block of more than 700 undifferentiated ASCII characters.

If you happen to guess that that it might be related to your Charter email account and stumble over to the Charter online help, you may find a message such as this:



Do you feel helped?

The short explanation is that Charter has a stupid policy that doesn't allow people to send mail through Charter email servers when they are not connected to the Internet through Charter.

If you go to one place around Worcester, you might be lucky and find that they use Charter for business, in which case you can send your message. Most places, though, have their own national ISP configurations and so block connections to Port 25 used to send email.

The workaround is to use Charter's webmail service, the one that welcomes you with email that includes the following message about the message:



If you have a VPN back to your home and can make a connection through a service there, you might be able to connect.

The other alternative is to use the mobile device settings (mobile.charter.net) and SSL for the IMAP and SMTP servers.. These settings are intended for smartphones, but appear to work with Outlook.

Sometimes, life hands you a banjo

It wasn't just life, though. It was long-time friend Ken. We met for breakfast this morning and talked for hours about flame plate in fighter jets, great teachers, the colored water of the old Nashua River, adaptive learning, and Massachusetts politics. It was the kind of conversation that Ken and I have had since we were in Little League, drops of water bouncing and scattering on a hot griddle.

It wasn't just any banjo. It was Don's 5-string.

Not a day goes by that we don't miss him. Not a day goes by that, knowing that we could have done better, we don't wonder if it would have been enough to make a difference.

First steps will be tune it, learn a few chords, and plunk out a blues progression.



It comes full circle. That was me, back when we were living in the garage, my grandmother looking on.

Sometimes, life hands you a banjo, again.

Crime in suburbia

From The Landmark (subscription required):
[Ed. Note: there were 22 suspicious items this week.]
Holden
Monday, November 26
9:47 a.m. Public service, lock-down drill at school, Jamieson Rd.
1:55 p.m. Vehicle lockout, Main St.
2:29 p.m. Caller complaining about protesters in front of post office, Main St.
4:27 p.m. Person at station to have someone speak to his daughter about underage drinking, Main St.
9:55 p.m. Firewood stolen during daylight from home on Paxton Rd.
Tuesday, November
27
6:16 a.m. Dispute over shared mailbox, Main St.
10:00 a.m. Person at station regarding suspicious phone call, Main St.
10:36 a.m. Caller wants to speak with officer regarding suspicious vehicle, Stoneleigh Rd.
1:45 p.m. Police at post office for follow-up, Main St.
Wednesday, November
28
2:38 a.m. Suspicious vehicle pulled into construction site behind house, Autumn Cir.
9:12 a.m. Tire and furniture left on side of Bond Rd.
10:26 a.m. Police check on suspicious person, Stoneleigh Rd.
12:15 p.m. Red fox in backyard, Beechwood Rd.
12:42 p.m. Car seat installation, Main St.
3:43 p.m. Fox hanging around neighborhood, Nola Dr.
4:43 p.m. Suspicious vehicle parked all day, Mason Rd.
Thursday, November 29
8:24 a.m. Hydroseeding truck sucking up water from swampy area on Quinapoxet St.
8:59 a.m. Officer out with dog in road, Stoneleigh Rd.
9:55 a.m. Someone fooled with caller’s windshield wipers and mirrors while she walked on rail trail, Manning St.
1:40 p.m. Police check on fox, Nola Dr. Fox sent on its way
10:01 p.m. Two suspicious males hanging around area, Princeton St.
11:02 p.m. Car carrier unloading vehicles in driveway, Main St.
Friday, November 30
4:51 p.m. Police check on suspicious vehicle with four occupants, Parker Ave.
Saturday, December 1
12:37 a.m. Suspicious activity in area of Chapel St.
10:08 a.m. Report of hunters too close to property line, Preservation Ln.
11:13 a.m. Police investigate loose cat, Main St.
12:44 p.m. People at station regarding civil issue between two interior decorating companies, Main St.
Sunday, December 2
2:42 a.m. Suspicious vehicle, River St.
10:46 a.m. Caller concerned about illegal flea market in Jefferson Park, Quinapoxet/Princeton Sts.
1:12 p.m. Item found near entrance of rail trail, Manning St.
3:01 p.m. Assist citizen with deer, Reservoir St.
3:58 p.m. Two males in field discharging firearms, North St.
Paxton
Tuesday, November 27
6:30 a.m. Person in woods behind caller’s house, Crystal St.
Wednesday, November 28
7:14 a.m. Caller struck dog, Marshall St.
9:02 a.m. Caller reports livery van crossing center line, Pleasant St.
12:45 p.m. Caller received letter form person in jail, Old Lantern Cir.
Thursday, November 29
1:25 p.m. Assist postal inspector with investigation, Mower St.
Friday, November 30
8:19 a.m. Request for police to check vehicle that twice drove behind building, Pleasant St
2:14 p.m. Truck and trailer on side Mower St., person went into woods with chainsaw
Princeton
Monday, November 26
9:19 a.m. Suspicious vehicle, Mountain Rd.
Tuesday, November 27
8:59 a.m. Graffiti on buildings and sign, Boylston Ave.
9:03 a.m. Suspicious person, Gregory Rd.
Friday, November 30
7:57 a.m. Two suspicious white pickup trucks with campers on back acting suspiciously, Calamint Hill Rd. S
11:26 a.m. Vehicle vs. stop sign, Fitchburg Rd./Rte. 140 N
Saturday, December 1
8:37 a.m. Snow-covered vehicle parked on hill, Rte. 140
Rutland
Monday, November 26
2:04 p.m. Caller regarding hunters on private property, Irish Ln.
Wednesday, November 28
7:05 p.m. Caller reports vehicle pulled in neighbor’s yard and did a “donut,” Brooke Haven Dr.
Friday, November 30
8:17 a.m. Person at station regarding suspicious activity at her home, Bethany Dr.
2:45 p.m. Horse caught up in fence, Central Tree Rd.
4:22 p.m. Mother at station regarding daughter smoking something given at school, Summerhill Dr.
11:52 p.m. Suspicious vehicle, Main St.
Saturday, December 1
12:30 p.m. Assist person locked out of vehicle, Pleasantdale Rd.
12:59 p.m. Woman walking on Edson Ave. looks lost
Sterling
Monday, November 26
7:37 p.m. Caller reports suspicious male in dark green Army coat, Davis Ledge Rd.
Tuesday, November 27
8:58 a.m. Suspicious vehicle and male walking around, John Dee Rd./Redemption Rock Trl.
Wednesday, November 28
6:47 a.m. Black and yellow Lab missing, Redstone Pl. Dog later returned
9:36 a.m. Two loose beagle puppies almost hit by vehicle, Chocksett/Clinton Rds.
12:37 p.m. Suspicious male walking up driveway, ran when dog barked, Wilder Rd.
Thursday, November 29
3:11 p.m. Suspicious vehicle, Jill Ln.
4:08 p.m. Tan and white bulldog in area of Meetinghouse Hill/Stuart Rds.
Friday, November 30
4:40 p.m. Lost, long-haired gray cat, Redstone Pl.
9:57 p.m. Officer checks on person shining flashlight into school building, found to be custodian checking school, Boutelle Rd.
Saturday, December 1
11:55 a.m. Suspicious vehicle, Albright Rd.
Sunday, December 2
9:05 a.m. Suspicious person driving around Wiles Rd.
6:07 p.m. Female walking down road in dark clothing, Princeton Rd.
9:54 p.m. Suspicious vehicle in driveway, Village Ln.

Toward a theory of technology education

Impressive title for a blog, eh?

Well, I'm nowhere near that full theory, but I've got a few pieces that are starting to take shape. The ideas are based on my experiences providing technical support for many people over many years.

Smart, good people call themselves stupid because their computers and telephones block them from doing a simple task. We've created a culture of disrespect that's the result of bad user interface and bad  software release practices (unannounced changes so that something that worked in one way yesterday doesn't work today).

A generation was mocked by the flashing 12:00 on their VCR clocks because a) each VCR had a different way of setting the time and, more importantly, b) the manufacturers were too fricking cheap to include a 50¢ battery that would preserve the time setting when you unplugged the device momentarily.

It's not likely that the industry is going to change its ways, so it's up to us. That's where this nascent educational theory is coming into shape. It has a few core principles that I'll be developing over a series of blogs:

• Language


• Expectations


• Community of learning


• Context

I'll touch on the first one, language, today.

If you don't know how to spell a word, look it up in the dictionary.

How many of you, as nine-year-olds, stared blankly at your teacher when she told you to look up a word that you didn't know how to spell? This moment may have been the beginning of your understanding that adults are nuts.

Second only to English language usage, English spelling rules are nonsensical and contradictory. (The phrase look it up, for example, uses the verb look in an archaic fashion as a transitive verb and sends us looking upwards. Perhaps a grammarian could help me diagram the sentence Look it up in the dictionary.)

The other day, a Mac user tried to explain her problem, that the thing with the pointer was missing from her desktop.

"I use it to navigate," she said.

I asked about the mouse pointer, which seemed to be ok.

"I click on it to read the New York Times," she said.

The icon for Safari was missing from her Dock.



If you saw the Safari icon in the wild, how would you describe it? A compass, right? How does that correlate with web browsing?



Once you make the association between an icon and the idea or activity, you're most likely just to forget that you even know it. Trouble surfaces, however, when the icon disappears. Is the program gone? Probably not.

Recommendations

• An icon dictionary that explains what each icon represents - what program it runs and what you do with the program. In the previous example, describing that icon as Safari wouldn't have helped much.


• People who work on the computer must document what they've done and why. The reason that the Safari icon was gone was that the Mac owner's son preferred Firefox and wanted to make it the default browser for his mother. He didn't tell her nor did he set it up so that she could get to the New York Times website as she's previously done.

Google Drive nixed

It took Google a long time to release its Google Drive product. People had come up with work-arounds involving storing files as attachments to Gmail messages. When it was finally released earlier this year, it was almost too late. Products such as Dropbox, Box, and Microsoft's SkyDrive (variously named Live and other monickers) had filled the file-sharing, synchronization, cloud storage void.

Google Drive is an evolution of Google Docs, an online authoring environment for documents, spreadsheets, and presentation. Spreadsheets can have a form-based front end. Recently, I used this form/spreadsheet interface to build an online survey used by a couple hundred folks.

By allowing any type of file to be stored in then-Google Docs, Google's online file service became a handy way to store and share files among teams. You can share individual files or an array of folders, sub-folders, and files with one person, many, or the world. You can even use it to host your web server content.

In parallel, I decided to move back to Linux. There are some tools that I need to use and, I hope, develop, work that is more easily done on Linux.

To my surprise and disappointment, I discovered that I can't access non-document files that are stored on Google Drive when I'm using a browser running on Linux. In this case, I had stored some executable files in a tools folder on Google Drive. I wanted to download them to my Linux installation.

No joy.

In order to download non-document files, you need to have an application running on your system. Google makes its drive application for Windows, Mac, and various portable devices, but not Linux. Note that the error message is so broken that the link to the image is missing.

For today, I'll need to switch back to Windows. Longer term, I will have to move many of my files to Dropbox, which does make a Linux client.

 

How to get a window seat on the bus

I'll be seeing some friends from high school this week. As we swap stories, sometimes we forget if events happened to us or someone else. It's a bit like the bats in the Pogo comic strip, Bewitched, Bothered and Bemildred, who often forgot who was whom.

Anyway, ...

Our junior high science teacher wanted us to study nature. For our spring project, we were to collect 25 different types of bugs. A couple of boys asked if we could go fishing, instead. She agreed. One fish would equal five bugs.

I caught a couple of fish, probably a kivver and a perch, because those were the most easily caught at the camp. Matched up with the 15 bugs, I turned in my specimens and left them in the science project room.

We hadn't thought this all the way through.. Within a day, the science project room equaled the gym locker room for odor and on the second day it won.

I tried throwing away the shoe box containing my project, but the janitor made me take it out of the trash bin and bring it home.

It was a 45-minute ride on the school bus. I had no trouble getting a seat for myself by a window.

The first of December ...

We are well on our way to a repaired home.

You may remember that the hurricane knocked down a tree that knocked down our chimney that broke the ceiling where Sandra sat. The chimney is fixed. A new roof is on. The ceiling will be replaced early next week.

We are, for the time being, nomads in our own home. The living room furniture is scattered to other rooms. We're quite ok, though.

A thin layer of fresh snow may delay some additional repairs on another part of the roof that are planned for today. More snow and ice is in the forecast for the overnight and then a warm-up.

Happy 99th Birthday, Huck.

And, for people of a certain age, here's that song that's in your head today.

Crime in suburbia

From The Landmark (subscription required):
[Editor's note: there were 16 suspicious items this week.]

Holden

Thursday -- November 15

2:24 p.m. Request for officer at high school, unknown issue, Main St.
3:25 p.m. Assist person locked out of vehicle, Main St.
5:14 p.m. Person ticketed for parking in handicapped space unhappy. Claims not to have been in handicapped space. Advised of appeal procedure, Reservoir St.
7:24 p.m. Check on people in field house. All set, winterizing facility, Main St.

Friday -- November 16

12:17 p.m. Complaint of loud music, Princeton St.
3:01 p.m. Multiple occupants of car arguing in parking lot, Reservoir St.
11:47 p.m. Suspicious vehicle, Reservoir St.

Saturday -- November 17

10:05 a.m. Caller found black Lab with leash, Reservoir St.
12:17 p.m. Stray dog in yard, Reservoir St.
12:36 p.m. Crew at vacant house blowing leaves and debris into neighbors’ yard, Lexington Cir.
1:25 p.m. Neighbors hanging around building, Princeton St.

Sunday -- November 18

1:40 a.m. Someone rang doorbell and took off,Salisbury St.
2:17 a.m.. Caller wants to speak to officer about previous call, Salisbury St.

Monday -- November 19

8:32 a.m. Dead animal in Shrewsbury St.
1:06 p.m. Car seat installation, Main St.
4:22 p.m. Vehicle parked beside Rte. 68
6:14 p.m. Suspicious male soliciting door-to-door, Gail Dr.
7:55 p.m. Suspicious vehicle, Colorado Dr./Arizona Ave.

Tuesday -- November 20

7:29 a.m. Vehicle struck deer, Bullard St.
9:36 p.m. Suspicious vehicle. Belongs to individuals involved in Asian long-horned beetle study, Salisbury St.

Wednesday -- November 21

2:04 a.m. Suspicious vehicle, Salisbury St.
7:34 a.m. Assist with car seat installation, Main St.
8:05 a.m. Refrigerator in or near Chapel St./Ottoson Way
12:03 p.m. Suspicious pickup truck traveling up and down Wilde Willow Dr.
2:29 p.m. Suspicious person knocking on doors, Vicksburg Cir. and Ft. Sumter Dr.

Thursday -- November 22

6:39 p.m. Report of male running and jumping in Fairhill Rd.
9:04 p.m. Assist person looking for family member’s vehicle, Main St.

Friday -- November 23

9:30 a.m. Suspicious vehicle, South Rd.
1:10 p.m. Police out with person who reported an unleashed dog on Bullard St. that came after her dog
7:15 p.m. Suspicious vehicles in lot on Princeton St.
7:33 p.m. Caller reports upset carpenter,Shrewsbury St.

Saturday -- November 24

9:39 a.m. Caller requests officer while carpenter removes his tools from her residence, Shrewsbury St.
1:44 p.m. Officer on drug investigation, Shrewsbury St.
4:56 p.m. Suspicious vehicle, Harris St.

Sunday -- November 25

11:21 a.m. Vehicle lockout, parking lot, Main St.
11:57 a.m. Check on three youths in parking lot, Main St.
12:57 p.m. Vehicle parked in driveway, Mixter Rd.

Paxton

Saturday -- November 17

6:19 p.m. High school teacher reports a party will take place tonight with underage kids, Howard St.
10:14 p.m. Several cars parked across the street from vacant house, Howard St. Holden PD notified. Assist Holden PD at large party

Sunday -- November 18

1:54 a.m. Caller’s neighbor setting off fireworks, Pleasant St.

Tuesday -- November 20

2:10 p.m. Caller wants to speak with officer about dead skunk on her property, William Allen Dr.

Princeton

Tuesday -- November 20

7:00 p.m. Suspicious vehicle, Hickory Dr.

Wednesday -- November 21

7:26 a.m. Two llamas in Brooks Station Rd. road near church
4:49 p.m. Assist person locked out of vehicle, child inside, Westminster Rd.
7:44 p.m. Suspicious male with flashlight on property on Rte. 140 N. Found to be a solicitor

Thursday -- November 22

8:26 a.m. Officer removes large rock from Sterling Rd.
9:19 a.m. Loose gray dog in Sterling Rd.
1:21 p.m. Police find mailbox in Willson Rd. Returned to owner

Saturday -- November 24

11:19 a.m. Caller received two letters from someone offering to buy her home, Beaman Rd.

Sunday -- November 25

6:19 p.m. Suspicious truck parked on Lovers Lane since Friday
8:55 p.m. Car struck deer, Rte. 140 N

Rutland

Tuesday -- November 20

4:23 p.m. School requesting officer, child got on wrong bus and was dropped off without a parent present, Maple Ave.
7:20 p.m. Officer removes dog from residence, Stevens Way

Wednesday -- November 21

3:22 p.m. Car parked at Rail Trail is sticking out in Pommogussett Rd.

Thursday -- November 22

9:52 a.m. Suspicious male soliciting for gas at gas station, Barre Paxton Rd.

Friday -- November 23

12:42 a.m. Suspicious vehicle parked in lot, Main St.
10:33 a.m. Stray coon hound at residence on E. County Rd. Dog reunited with owner
6:37 p.m. Black bear on porch and wandering through yard, Pleasantdale Rd.

Saturday -- November 24

9:15 a.m. Person wants to turn in old ammunition, Charnock Hill Rd.
2:54 p.m. Caller reports loose horse in road by Rutland State Park

Sterling

Monday -- November 19

6:03 a.m. ATVs in the road. Riders stated a tree was down across the trail, had to cut into the roadway, N Row Rd./Heywood Rd. Advised to stay off the road
3:57 p.m. People walking out of woods and changing direction when cars approach, Greenland/Reed Rds.

Thursday -- November 22

12:48 a.m. Loud noises from apartment for three hours, Patriots Way
4:13 p.m. Elderly female walking in Leominster Rd.

Sunday -- November 25

12:15 a.m. Barking dog complaint, Princeton Rd.
9:55 a.m. Beagle chasing coyote in back yard, Beaman Rd.
3:11 p.m. Suspicious vehicle driving in circles, Kilburn Rd.
6:27 p.m. Missing Rhodesian Ridgeback dog, Clinton Rd.

Walking as a health hazard

I had my annual physical. Nothing much to report. I'm in pretty good shape for the shape I'm in.

We live about a quarter-mile from the doctor's office, a nice walk on a cool morning. On the way, a neighbor drives past quickly. She's talking on the phone and  drinking a cup of coffee. She waves a friendly greeting.

When I get to the office, I mention to my doctor that one of my riskiest habits is walking to doctor's office.

When you need a disk drive on a Saturday ...

One of the family desktop computers developed a problem. The disk drive was failing. After tinkering with various disk repair utilities, I determined that we needed to replace the drive.

We were coming in to the Thanksgiving holiday week, with only two days of school, so I didn't hurry to order one online. I figured I could find one at a local store, install it, and set it up over the long weekend.

When you go to Staples, you discover that the disk drive product boxes on the shelves not only do not contain disk drives, but do not even represent disk drives elsewhere in the store. The message on the box says,  Please ask an associate for assistance. I asked. I learned that they don't keep drives in stock. They could order one if I'd like.

After a Thanksgiving dinner that couldn't be beat and another day around the house, I thought I could pick up a drive at Best Buy and perform the aforementioned transplant.

Almost.

A kind, blue-shirted sales associate pointed out several drives of varying price and capacity. I picked out one and proceeded to the checkout counter. Best Buy in the Greendale Mall in Worcester has an entrance/exit to the mall. We figured that we'd make our purchase and walk around a bit. The checkout was staffed by another blue-shirted associate who told us that we couldn't check out at that checkout station, that we had to go to the front of the store, the side away from the mall entrance.

Fine.

I brought the drive to the checkout. A loud, blue-shirted employee told us that we could use Register 8. The nice blue-shirted cashier took the drive and brought to another desk to remove the do-not-steal tag on the box. She brought the box back, scanned it, and waited for me to pay the $170 or so. I said that was not the price I was expecting, that the sticker on the shelf said $70. I wanted to go back to the shelf, check the price, and, if needed, pick up one that was truly the price I wanted.  The nice blue-shirted cashier told me to wait.  She told the loud blue-shirted employee who called loudly to unseen person to check the price. At this point, three people were trying to figure out if the scanner was incorrect.

There was a good chance that I'd picked up the wrong box. I was fine with that. I wasn't fine with having to wait while they checked their inventory-scanner system. I left.

By the way, the tools on Hiren's BootCD are very good. I was able to clean up the disk enough to muscle out the User directory tree. I have a disk on order from Amazon (next day shipping), but may be able to get a used one from a local repair guy.

This is the part that the retailers don't get. Online shopping isn't about price-matching. It's about having the product I need and letting me buy it easily. A 10-year-old running a lemonade stand knows this. Staples and Best Buy, it seems, don't.

Serenity Prayer as told by Pointy-Haired Boss

Scott Adams has been reading my mail.


While we're at it, here's a bit of background on the prayer.

The Swiss Army Knife of Melodies

Picking up on thread from a MetaFilter post, let's see how a good tune has many uses.

Will I get more money if I prove that I can't spell?

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Best Buy, dead store walking

Let me start by saying that I really want Best Buy to succeed. I want and need a local store where I can pick up a gadget or accessory on short notice.

That said, and related to my previous post, I was hoping to pick up a Bluetooth keyboard for my Nexus 7. Colleague Mitch Wagner suggested the Logitech 920-003390 Tablet Keyboard for Android.

Amazon offers the keyboard, available for 2^nd day delivery, at $49.00.

I checked Best Buy online:



This page doesn't show the price. It's $69.99  so that  I can have it shipped to one of the stores in 7-10 business days.

How I work - Google Docs

Most of the time when I leave my home office, I take only a tablet, either an iPad or Nexus 7.

My editors prefer plain HTML with separate image files. They can work with Word files, but strip out most of the formatting. I use Word mostly for the editing tools such as auto-correct, word count, and grammar checking.

There are a lot of make-do products that let you work with Microsoft Word documents. Office 365, the web version of Office, is one of them. You access it through a browser from any device. In addition, I could use WordPress or similar blogging product to create my docs.

Google Docs provides a good editing environment for documents, covering the basic features of headers, styled paragraphs, links, and images. A recently added features permits offline access to files. I can edit my my files when not connected to the Internet. Google Docs will synchronize the edited docs when I reconnect.

The trouble with Office 365 and Google Docs is that the HTML output that they generate gives spaghetti code a bad name. It's bloated and doesn't create a separate CSS file to segregate the formatting code.

I'm trying a cleanup tool called Tidy-HTML5. It's an experimental variant on the tidy/html-tidy family of tools. It has a -gdoc switch that cleans up the HTML. Tidy-HTML5 requires a *nix environment where you can compile the tool. It works well on Cygwin.

The Android version of Google Drive (the app that provides docs and spreadsheets) doesn't support direct editing of spreadsheets. You can open the spreadsheet in your browser  and make edits there. I've tested spreadsheet editing in Safari and Chrome on the iPad and Chrome on the Nexus 7.

Happy 8th Birthday, Cassie

[caption id="attachment_4006" align="aligncenter" width="224"] Cassie prepares Monster High for the next week's classes[/caption]

Better than OK

According to people who know such things, the phrase "We are OK." was the most common phrase in Facebook posts during and shortly after Post-Tropical Cyclone mega-Frankenstorm Sandy. We are and then some.
As we mentioned on Facebook, the storm blew over a 50-foot, 100-year-old spruce tree onto our house, slicing off the chimney top which tumbled down to the roof of our family room. The sound caused my wife, Sandra, to jump up just as pieces of the ceiling came crashing down. It took a few minutes to figure out what has happened, by which time power went out town-wide.

Son Mike, a building contractor, lives a couple miles away and showed up quickly. His quick assessment, with the storm still strong, was we couldn't be sure that the house was safe. Water was coming in around the stub of the chimney and the family roof was sagging. We' couldn't be sure if any electrical wires were damaged.  After an hour of muddled thinking, we decided to spend the night with Mike's family.

There we were greeted and comforted. We listened Miss Cassie read her report on E. B. White's Stuart Little. Her report was a retelling of the story from the perspective of Snowbell, the family cat. Power came back to the town earlier than expected. Mike and Lynn gave up their bed to us. We were up early and returned home at first light.
The day passed quickly. The tree company that Mike called was on the scene with three trucks by 8 and the tree was gone by 10. A mason inspected the chimney. Mike and a framer friend cleared away the old chimney and patched the hole. The insurance inspectors were on the scene by 4. At 6, we were back at Mike and Lynn's for a birthday party for Cassie and me.

Back home, we have heat from the wood stove. (The furnace will be off until the chimney is repaired.) We are moving onto the new normal that, for a time, has a torn ceiling and a silent furnace. The house, for the first time in more than a century, is open to the east.

More importantly, we are energized with the fresh expressions of love and friendship and competence. We settled in long enough to watch the TV news of the fires and flooding in New York and the concomitant need for  heroics and compassion and money.

A while ago, after a rough personal episode, I remarked to one of my doctors that I was eager to get back to normal.

"There is no normal," he said. "There just is."

Charter says, "Go online if you have trouble going online."

Our ISP, Charter, has an app that offers a Frequently Asked Questions section, wherein you get this helpful tip:



Not only that, but the web address isn't clickable.

Living and working in a tech news bubble

While the tech press is all tangled up with the upcoming Microsoft, Apple, and Google product announcements, it's time for for a marketing reality check. What are consumers generally hearing about these new products?

It turns out that the mainstream media isn't covering this and so, we can assume, most folks aren’t receiving much reason to get excited. Local newspapers and television stations and even a few national channels give only passing mention to topics such as the Microsoft Surface tablet, iPad Mini, or Nexus 7, or Windows 8.

I chose several Boston-area television and newspaper web sites along with a couple of national resources: WBZ (CBS), WCVB (ABC), and WHDH (NBC), Boston Globe, Boston Herald, Worcester Telegram (a nearby, mid-sized daily), CNN, PBS, and Fox News. For each site, I searched for articles with certain keywords in the title.

Note: I would have used Bing on IE for searching in an effort to replicate what a typical non-technical user might use. Bing, however, doesn’t support date-filtering of its search queries.

The Microsoft Surface tablet is a hot new product second only to Windows 8 in terms of company impact. The people who are cover Microsoft and Windows products for a living are having a hard time understanding, let alone explaining the difference between a Windows 8 tablet and a Windows RT tablet, both due for the release this week. The average news consumer is troubled by a surfeit of news to confuse. On average, people have been offered one story about the Surface in the past month. Most sites, in fact, hadn’t reported on the Surface after the June announcement and the recent scheduling of the product release.

The Nexus 7 is a fun product that's receiving a lot of good coverage in the trades. In our local media survey, however, only one site, the Boston Globe, had a story about Google’s breakout tablet.

Apple has an announcement scheduled for October 23. Most people who speculate about such things expect that we’ll learn about a 7-or-so-inch iPad that’s generally been called the iPad Mini.

Meanwhile, all of the chatter about the iPhone 5 hasn’t made clear just what Apple released. I sat with a person recently while an ad for the refreshed iPod line showed up on TV. Seeing the brightly colored bouncing devices, she asked, "Is that the new iPhone?"

Microsoft is betting the company on its radical redesign of the user interface in Windows 8. While the tech press has been covering each of the nooks and crannies, Windows 8 has received scant coverage in our press pool. We found an average of fewer than four stories in the last month. During the same period, the sites averaged more than 27 stories about Big Bird. CNN and the Boston Globe provided peak coverage while PBS, home of our faithful feathered friend, posted just one. After the spike following the October 3 debate, Big Bird’s gone back to quieter corners while Windows 8 coverage continues its slow climb.

The results for Windows phone, including the much anticipated Windows Phone 8 release, were too small to measure.

If you search the web for these products, you’ll find lots of coverage. Google news search provides a much higher return on tech news, so it’s not surprising that these terms are more visible in Google news sites. Most folks, however, aren’t searching for news about gadgets and software. Google Hot Trends shows the current topics in high demand. People are interested in sports, celebrities, and a few disasters and tragedies. Their lives are uncluttered by commentary about tech in general and new product releases, unless it’s something from Apple. Watch the trends in the days after Apple’s announcement.

For those of us in the tech marketing trades, it’s good to spend an afternoon with people who don’t give a damn about this stuff. It’s good to remember that, for people are buying these products, technology is a tool and not a goal.

 

What Glassdoor thinks that I do for a living

Received the latest list of job prospects from Glassdoor. Apparently, someone believes that I'd be any kind of useful in the delivery room because I'm so savy and all.

Point-counterpoint: Users

Square CEO Jack Dorsey says that his company and the rest of us should stop referring to computer-products customers as users.

We don't have users, we have customers we earn. They deserve our utmost respect, focus, and service. Because that’s who we are.

His full blog post is here.

Dave Winer, inventor of many things, particularly RSS, says that user is the right word.

The answer is to love those users so much that they don't mind being called users. That's an art a lot of tech companies have yet to master.

Scott Adams says,

Point-counterpoint: Multivitamins

Many folks were excited at the news that a long cycle, double-blind study showed that multivitamins reduced cancer incidence in men. Overall, researchers found an eight percent reduction in cancer incidence, with some cancers reduced even more than that. The vitamins had no significant effect on prostate cancer. The multivitamin was Centrum Silver.

Consumer Reports jumped in a few hours later with a cautionary message.

"The only end point that reached statistical significance, and that barely, was in the occurrence of cancer in general," says Marvin Lipman, M.D., Consumer Reports' Chief Medical Adviser. "The use of multivitamins did not affect site-specific cancers, such as colon cancer, nor did their use decrease the death rate from cancer," he says. "This study would not persuade me to tell my patients to take multivitamins."

There is an apparent difference of opinion about the affect on site-specific cancers. Further, CR found that some people had other health problems resulting from multivitamin usage. One study showed an increased risk for women of breast cancer.

What have the ants ever done to him?

The Gardner News: modern offer, modern rejection

The Gardner News is enthusiastic about these new mobile webby things. They include a QR code in the paper from time to time.

Each time that I use my trusty Google Googles to scan the code, however, I get this.

[caption id="attachment_3939" align="alignnone" width="168"] Click to enbiggen[/caption]

It's been temporarily for the many months that I've tried it.

What the small road tells us

Already the camp road is covered with needles and leaves. There are pine needles and yellow leaves from birches and the early maples. Near the water, the maples are orange and bright red.

It was a great season at the camp, four months of that second cup of coffee on the front porch, brought indoors by the cool of early fall. We had lots of time to ourselves and big gatherings in celebration of milestone birthdays.

The heron, great big improbable bird, greeted us in the spring, went away, and bid us farewell in the fall. An eagle surveyed the cove.

We worked, real for-pay work, but we could take a swim when it was hot. It was a full summer. We took one weekend off and acted as if we were vacationers in town, doing touristy things and toured the lake by kayak and canoe.

A friend used to remind me that biblical storytellers would say that an event came to pass, not that it came to stay.  A few years ago, some of you might remember, we started to live at the camp. The death of my wife's father and chronic illness of her mother flipped those plans onto another path. With the resilient support of her family and caretakers, Sandra's mother is doing pretty well.

We have a few ideas for next year, but we're not through with our ideas for this year yet. I have a good array of work ahead. I have friends I've not seen recently; it's easy to let people get away.

We have clusters of birthdays, holidays, and birthdays again. Laid out on a calendar, it looks crowded, but each one is special and worthy. Each birthday forces a hard question: how well do we know what's important to the person having the birthday? With little kids, it's easy because they'll tell you directly. As people grow, however, they might not even know themselves and so we have to try to help.

We worked hard to put things out of reach of mice and squirrels who will come in from the cold. We brought home the obviously edible stuff and packed everything made of cloth or paper in bins. The acorn crop was a bit better than average, so we can look forward to a cold winter.

My father said each fall the wet leaves are slipperier than snow. We drive carefully on the road covered with needles and leaves.

Dept. of Superheroes

While getting ready for the school bus yesterday, Miss Cassie mentioned that a kid at school got a bit confused one day and put his jacket on, over his backpack. The kids called him Jacket-Over-Backpack Man.

Sleep easily, suburbanites. Jacket-Over-Backpack Man has your, um, back.

We can be grateful that we don't have to rely on Arm Fall Off Boy.

In which a stick becomes a root

Sandra has been in California for a few days, celebrating her friend-since-childhood Janet's birthday. She returns this evening.

On Saturday, I took care of my errands early with a trip to the dump and then the grocery store. I settled in for a couple of days of being alone.

The productivity folks suggest that you add a time estimate to the items on your to-do list. That way, it's easy to pick off short tasks and feel productive, even if you're a bit unfocused. My list was a mix of big and little things - paperwork for a couple of nonprofits, cut down a small tree that is growing too close to the utility pole, pay the bills, split firewood, and on like that.

Most of the things I was able to dispatch with ease. The firewood is like that. Some of the wood has been lying on the ground for a couple of years. (I thought I would be getting to it that summer, but those plans were overcome by other events.) Surprisingly, the bark protected most of the wood, leaving it damp but still solid. It split easily. In 20 minutes, I had enough for a day's burning.

Other chores went walkabout. I had some forms that were worth about 15 minutes. They took two hours and are still not done. They are state forms. Something happens to arithmetic when it enters that world. Numbers that should add up nicely produce random results.

It's easy to get discouraged and weary when you spent a long time on a simple task. You can walk away and do something else, which I did plenty of times. At day's end, though, in spite of many tasks crossed off the list, that remaining undone lump stands proud and defiant.

While walking around the yard, I bent down to pick up a stick. It was a root. I tugged on it, tearing up the ground for a couple of feet. The first set of clippers that I found was dull and couldn't cut the sinew. The next set was sharp enough. I cut it cleanly, repacked the tear in the ground, and went about my day. The root will grown back next year.

Happy 13th Birthday, Lily

[caption id="attachment_3896" align="aligncenter" width="500"] Seen here this summer with Rocco and guest, Thompson.[/caption]

When English usage rules fail

The standard usage rule of placing punctuation inside quotation marks causes an unnecessary problem for new application developers. Grammar Girl notes that British writers can decide on the inside/outside usage based on context. American writers must put punctuation inside the quotation marks, even if it causes problems in technical writing.

For reasons that might become apparent at a later date, I decided to try my hand at Android application development. Using the guidance provided on the Android development site, I dutifully downloaded and configured Eclipse and the Android development kit. If you're not one who does this often, the setup can be tricky, so it's good to follow the instructions exactly.

When I reached the step of creating my first application, I followed the steps on the Creating an Android Project page.



If I use My First App. as the name of, um, my first app, the form doesn't regard it as a valid name. Note that the dialog box doesn't let me proceed; the Next button is grayed out.



If I remove the period that is inside the quotation mark and name my application My First Application, I can move on to the next step.

Well, that was fun

I was tinkering with the DNS settings on this blog and the gears threw a few teeth. We should be quiet again for a while.
Thanks for your patience.

Are you ready to turn over your school's...

Are you ready to turn over your school's tech support to the kids? Some schools have already done so.

Educational IT - Karl Hakkarainen - The Help-Yourself (& Others) Help Desk

Along with the bring-your-own-device trend, savvy IT departments are harnessing the independence of their users to solve their own IT and training issues.

As innovative as this sounds,developing...

As innovative as this sounds,developing water-intensive products in New Mexico seems wrong-headed.

First portion of huge algae farm in New Mexico is done

Come take a look at the first phase of Sapphire Energy's algae farm in New Mexico. When eventually built out it will produce 100 barrels of algae biofuel a day, and currently the five-year-old startup...

Paul Ryan is so confident that he and Mitt...

Paul Ryan is so confident that he and Mitt Romney will win that he is also running for his current congressional seat.

As he seeks bigger job, Ryan runs to keep old one - The Boston Globe

Paul Ryan has been busy preparing to face off next month with Vice President Joe Biden, cramming on foreign policy and trying to mesh his views with his new running mate, Mitt Romney. But back here at...

Various forces align against Uber's pay-...

Various forces align against Uber's pay-by-app expansion.

Digital Draw - Karl Hakkarainen - The Battle for the Backseat

Taxi-hailing app Uber has run into a legal roadblock in the Big Apple with seat-back digital advertisers.

Learning by getting it wrong

While writing a blog for another site, I wanted to use the metaphor of the old Nickel-Cadmium (NiCd) battery memory effect problem. For those of you who remember the early portable devices, such as Sony's Discman, they used NiCd batteries. We were warned through the documentation and our friends that we should always completely drain the battery before recharging. Otherwise, the battery would lose its ability to charge fully and develop a memory for a certain charge level, sometimes called a set point.

I wanted to allude to the fact that people can develop this set point as well, losing the ability to learn only so much, which was far less than what their original capacity would indicate.

Upon further research, I learned that the memory effect wasn't really there. It was mostly about the behavior of cheap chargers and the perception, not the fact, that the battery wasn't fully charged. The explanation is nicely summed up in Dan's Quick Guide to Memory Effect, You Idiots.

The metaphor works even better. People can learn, even when their brains appear to be over-full or when they appear to be not fully open to change. It may look as though they aren't learning and can't use the knowledge. Our perceptions of the way that others learn is, in part, what's faulty, as well as the charging (educational) system.

NiCd batteries are hazardous waste. I don't know where that fits into the metaphor.

Kickstarter propels local entrepreneurs -...

Kickstarter propels local entrepreneurs - The Boston Globe

Joseph Schlesinger of Somerville needed $13,000 to develop what he thought was a pretty cool product idea: do-it-yourself kits for gadget enthusiasts to assemble and program their own spider-like robo...

Windows 8 will mean a brisk business for...

Windows 8 will mean a brisk business for IT folks who will a) uninstall it and install Windows 7 or b) spend lots of billable hours supporting customers who are trying to get simple things done.

GoLocal Tech: Windows 8 is Charming to a Fault

Hakkarainen’s Law of Product Development: Every product evolves until it becomes unusable.

It seems obvious that market research will...

It seems obvious that market research will let you make better use of your marketing funds. Survey respondents, however, generally didn't know about the major research firms that are reporting on digital signage.

Digital Draw - Karl Hakkarainen - Market Research Shows the Way

Better market research leads to increased use of digital media by bank customers.

Mr. Hakkarainen goes to Helsinki

It's been a somewhat quiet summer in Finland, so we have just a couple of news items. Both are brought to us by way of Google Translate because neither story reached the English-speaking press.

Previously, Hakkarainen found himself with unwanted press and political attention for racist, sexist, and a bunch of other *ist remarks. When censured by his party and Parliament, he claimed that he'd been drinking but would stop. This summer, however, he found it inconvenient to stay stopped while on holiday. As a result, he missed a couple of government meetings. Another MP urged Hakkarainen to find a way to sobriety. Juha Väätäisen said that Hakkarainen has clearly shown that he has a problem with alcohol and that complete sobriety is the only option.

Maybe it's related, maybe not. Hakkarainen was, well, we don't need to translate this headline and photo:


Hakkarainen claims that the relationship is platonic.

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This post is one of a series about Teuvo Hakkarainen, the True Finns Party MP from Viitasaari. For the record, my grandfather was born in Viitasaari.