Brendan's Brains

New Blog New Website

2005-06-30T19:53:38Z

Hi again everyone! You probably noticed I'm not blogging on LiveJournal anymore. Actually I haven't done much blogging at all in the past couple of months. Well I'm back! But now I'm on my new website; in a move many of you will find obvious, past-due, or perhaps just annoying, I've registered my *legal* name for my new website. Please update your bookmarks, if you care :-)

www.BrendanBaldwin.com

Enjoy! See you there-- or maybe not?!

P.S. -- I'm still reading all yer LJ blogs too-- I just don't log in to LJ to do it anymore, since all you LJ-ers have RSS feeds, I just read you via NewsGator. The downside is, I still have to login to LJ to see the friends-only posts (which I do maybe monthly) because those don't syndicate through RSS (as far as I can tell).

Lappy 686 Goes to Goes to Florida and Brendan Tries to get a Life

2005-04-25T23:52:18Z

So I am sans home-computer for the moment as I just finally sent it in for repairs after getting completely fed up with my Sharp "desktop replacement" laptop's jet-engine db-level processor fan sounds and its constant overheating and rebooting whenever it felt like it. UPS came and picked it up on Saturday and is taking it to Florida where hopefully technicians will be too confused or out of proper parts and will just give me credit so I can get myself a Mac or something (wishful thinking!)

Anyways, the major point here is that I'm not spending time at home in front of a computer screen. This is confusing and freeing and actually feels like vacation.

Which is leading me to think a lot about what I really need/want a computer for in the first place. So much of my time is spent at a computer and thats how I make my living and get most of my information/news etc, but its been a while since I took a look at what the point is.

Incidentally, an interesting story (link is to CNN though this story is all over the web today) points out that "E-mails hurt IQ more than pot" which begs the question-- should I give up on email and just smoke weed so I can be smarter?

Of course that's against company policy, so I'll refrain for the time being.

Anyways, apologies to everyone who might be expecting me to carry on internet-based conversations over the next few weeks as I am taking the opportunity to step away from computers in my personal time until I figure out what the point is anyways.

Of course maybe my computer-related inspiration is just being dulled due to my job. I've complained about it for a number of months probably and I just need to push harder to find something good. So I'm going to redesign my site or at least add a portfolio to it ASAP and start writing companies that look like good places to work instead of waiting for the right positions to open up and hiring managers to call me back about positions I find on monster etc.

One other note, I've been keeping a paper journal recently which explains sort of why I don't really blog much anymore-- and just in case you were wondering if I've been sucked into yet another viral marketing scheme, yes, it's a damn moleskine. Seriously though, it's a sweet little journal. I actually have 2. One for work and one for personal use.

This weekend I went on a tour of the Frank Lloyd Wright Home & Studio in Oak Park, IL. It was a great day. For starters it was great just to get out of the apartment and walk around on a gorgeous day. Secondly, it was just good for my brain to learn stuff while not plugged into the internet. Even though our tour-guide sucked, it was still an very educational and inspirational experience. It was reaffirming of the existence of "value" off-web. Not that it should be a surprise to me, but it still feels like it sometimes.

Last Year Today (Almost)

2005-04-18T19:56:29Z

On April 14th of this year, Natalie pointed out I had linked backwards to April 14th of the previous year on my journal, but I got distracted and forgot to do that. So here I go: Last year today (and four days ago)

One difference this year is that I'm not watching reality TV as much, although I admit to having seen most of the VH1 "Strange Love" (Flava Flav+ Brigete Nielson -- too lazy to spell-check her name sorry.) I also watched about 45 minutes of the Metallica documentary "Some Kind of Monster" before shutting off the TV in horror. I can't believe this is the same band that produced "Master of Puppets". Sad sad sad.

Also last year I had just started working at Citadel and pretty much thought I'd be a permanent employee by now, but that hasn't come to pass (apparently takes as long to go perm as it does to get a fricking software package installed on my workstation) and so I'm still a contractor and that's kind of why I'm busy looking for a new gig.

I also notice that last year I had just started rumblings about switching to Mac, and well a year goes by and I have finally made the decision. Of course I need to save up a little bit before I can do it, but I've been having issue with my Windows laptop and am going to send it back to Circuit-City (btw dont EVER buy a computer from Circuit City) and hope my $400 Circuit-City "City Advantage Plan" combined with possibly unfixable problems or outdated machine might force them to give me store credit or something...

But yeah-- Mac, and I'll be getting after Tiger is already released so YAY! "Smart Folders" -- I can't frigging wait! Plus I'm looking forward to using the whole Unix under-the-hood aspect of Tiger instead of Cygwin on-top-of-the-hood on Windows. I really tried to get my Debian Linux install working, but my particular laptop's NVidia chipset isnt supported so I can't really enjoy running X on Linux. Something to play around with another time I suppose. I love the command line, but I still need the GUI to do my front-end development, so I think going Mac is going to make me very happy.

I've been living with Natalie for almost a year and a half or so now and that is going awesome. Like way awesome. We're even talking about getting a puppy! I love you, sweety! :-)

And I'm not going to post anything here about my taxes this time, except to say that I'll be paying the piper with interest and then some this time.

Bank One

2005-04-15T17:07:42Z

So now that Chase owns Bank One, check out this interesting overdraft policy. Lets say as a matter of academic interest you have $100 in your account:

balance: $100.00

Lets say you make 10 purchases with your debit card that day. The first 9 purchases are for $1.00 items:

debit: -$1.00 x 9 = $9.00
balance: $91.00

The last purchase is for $101.00.

debit: -$101.00
balance: -$10.00

Now that last purchase puts you in the red for $1.00, triggering an overdraft fee of $30.00. That's not too exceptional. That's to be expected and I don't have a problem with that. That's part of the contract.

But the policy of the bank NOW, is to sort all purchases in descending order by value when calculating the transactions for the day. So the $101 gets processed first. Descending value vs time of purchase. So the overdraft fees in this case start with the last transaction of the day and cascade down to the tiny items that were bought first.

Then the next day you get a:

$300.00 insufficient funds fee

For going in the red by $10.00 goddamned dollars!

Of course it doesn't specify how the hell they calculated that amount -- you have to call them. Then they explain the policy and then you point out how lame it is and then they agree with you and put you on hold and you have to really push to get a manager and finally you get the $300 in charges reversed.

And then you go a less evil bank and open a new account.

Scotland, the new Nigeria

2005-04-04T20:36:51Z

Finally a new player on the block challenges Nigeria's monopoly:

From: DR FRANK JIM <frankjim@virgilio.it>

The Auditor/Head
of Department
Bank of Scotland,
United Kingdom.

Dear Partner,

In order to transfer out ?15,000,000.00 (Fifteen Million Pounds
Sterling)from our bank here,I have the courage to look for a reliable
and honest person who will be capable for this important transaction,
believing that you will never let me down either now or in future.I am
dr frank jim the auditor and head of computing department of a bank here
in Scotland, United Kingdom. There is an account opened in this bank in
1995 and since my inception into office in 2001,nobody has operated on
this account again,after going through some old files,I discovered that
if i do not remit this money out urgently, it will be forfeited for nothing.

I know that this message will come to you as a surprise as we don't
know our selves,and neither have we met.But be sure that it is real
and a genuine business.I will use my position and influence on other
staffs to effect the legal approvals and onward transfer of this money
to your account with appropriate clearance from foreign payment department.
With assurance that this money will be intact pending my physical arrival
in your country for the sharing and possible investments.Please reply
immediately to my private email address:(dr_frankjim2@yahoo.co.in).OR call
me with my telephone number[44-7040103950]

Thanks God and belss,
Sincerely Yours,
Dr Frank Jim

Romancing the Mac

2005-03-30T23:18:12Z

Regardless of whether or not I wind up ever switching to Mac, specifically, I love the stories surrounding Apple and was very pleasantly surprised to find a really nice website dedicated to such stories, created by Andy Hertzfeld and some other old Mac engineers, entitled Folk Lore dot org. Pretty cool.

In the meantime, before I get a Mac, I hope I can finish getting my old messed up broken laptop to have a functioning network connection so I can finish the Debian installation. Installing Linux over Windows, without access to a functional CD drive turns out to be a ROYAL pain the a--. I'm thinking of restoring Windows on this one (if I can) and installing Linux on my non-crippled laptop, thought the keyboard on that one is all jacked up due to an encounter with a spilled soda a couple years ago.

iPod at Work

2005-03-30T19:43:03Z

So I've been listening a lot to the mp3s available on IT Conversations dot com and the content is really great and interesting, but every now and then when I hit a problem at work which requires extra concentration I need to take the headphones off or I get distracted by what the speakers are saying.

Of course, sometimes when I take them off, the office environment is actually more distracting than a compelling discussion on a subject I'm interested in, and includes many highly erratic and jarring elements such as the guy behind me who is swearing about 90% of the day because he can't figure out some piece of code "god d*** sh** that's not it you f***ing piece of sh**"

I just remembered, there's such a thing as music! I have been listening to these IT talks so non-stop for the past few weeks I forgot I had music on my iPod. Okay, moments like this call for some nice droning trance music. Not distracting, but it blocks out the swearing.

Job Search Goal #1

2005-03-29T22:29:50Z

I have decided that in my list of goals for my next job, at the top of the list is that I will not be required to sit at Microsoft-based workstation. I'll go with Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, Java OS, even Mac OSX. Just no more Windows.

Windows has had more than 10 years to not be a steaming pile of dogsh!t and it really isn't making a whole lot of progress in that regard. Microsoft really should get out of the OS business forever and just stick to writing applications, which is all they're even slightly good at.

Imagine what might have happened to the PC industry if the IBM PC had shipped with a real operating system like Unix instead of the reworked CPM or whatever it was that MS snagged for their first "MS DOS". The experience of early PC computing would probably have been ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE better. I actually think the world might be a much more beautiful place.

I feel that every time I learn to be proficient with a commonplace *nix tool like SED, AWK, or even GREP that I'm unearthing amazing magical powers after being crippled by the "lets use a GUI wizard for EVERYTHING" mentality of Microsoft operating system tools.

But seriously, even if it's a little harder to find some work that's not in a Windows shop, I'm willing to take the time. It will speak volumes about the mindset of the company I work for.

Not that this is likely to impact anyone reading this, but...

2005-03-23T19:26:40Z

I am now focusing 100% of my available energies (re: time spent when not at work) on my job search. So unfortunately I wont be working on Juju or anything else. I've been actively/casually looking for a better job since around December, and while I've found some interesting options, nothing has really clicked yet-- therefore I've decided to really 'put my back into it' and make this happen.

Considering I spend probably only 1% of my time dealing with friends and the outside world as it is, you probably won't notice the change. Hopefully though, I'll have some fabulous news about an exciting new job I'm working soon. Alternatively, you may see several job-search related rants. You have been warned.

Interesting Interface

2005-03-22T20:59:51Z

I'm a sucker for simple and compelling. Here's a piece of software for managing recurring tasks (things like exercising or going to the farmer's market or whatever.) The tool is called Sciral Consistency.

It's $25 so I probably won't buy this or use it, but it's still cool-looking and I'll probably steal, er, repurpose aspects of the design in a future project if applicable.

Just a Quick Hello

2005-03-22T19:34:50Z

Well I haven't been writing much of anything recently-- Have been a good deal of frustrating time attempting to get RedHat SELinux installed on my WinXP Laptop as a dual-boot, a task which is complicated by the fact that my laptop has no working CD drive and I don't yet have PartitionMagic or equivalent. Am attempting to achieve this goal without purchasing anything or using pirated warez. Am thinking that if I can't finish this by tonight that I should give in and head over to serialz.to and just kazaa myself some utils. Anyone know of a freeware Windows-installable OS-booter and/or Disk Partitioning software? (Please don't respond with "fdisk".)

Aside from that I've been spending any available think-time working on the markup syntax, query engine, and developing a simple file-based (as opposed to database powered) persistence layer for my Juju project. Am doing this after coming to appreciate the transparency of CVS's file-based repository format vs. the opaque-ness in the database repository format of Subversion. Am thinking that perhaps the first release version of Juju will be file-based and then I'll post the JDBC-enabled (w/MySQL tested) version.

It feels like there is so little time in the days! I've more-or-less actively begun my job search (although I am currently employed) and am looking forward to getting a gig doing more challenging work than what I have been stuck doing for the past several months. I've been getting into some Aspect-Oriented-Programming stuff, but have not seen any jobs in the area for AspectJ or equivalent. Anyways, blah. Hello everyone!

Here's something you don't see every day...

2005-03-18T23:11:47Z

If you haven't gone to Archive.org and searched through their full length archive of feature films available for free download, then DO EET.

Here's one from "The Soviet Film Agency" entitled "Experiments in the Revival of Organisms". I stumbled on to this gem while looking for a WWII propoganda film I watched yesterday that I wanted to blog about today but couldn't find. More on that one later.

Oh and this is hilarious. "Perversion for Profit" is a 1965 anti-pornography propoganda film. I'm remixing this audio some day. It's SOOO hilarious.

Now that's a typo...

2005-03-18T21:09:19Z

Editing some more crap 3rd-party source-code today, I came across the following message in the login form:

"Sorry, you have exceed the number of tries allowed for logging in. Please HiringManager your system administrator for further errors."

So I'm thinking-- the people that wrote this software aren't just bad programmers, but they're actually incapable of conveying information in simple sentences. My employer is a multi-billion dollar company and they paid a multi-lots-of-cash amount for this software, which shows again that you don't really have to produce a good product to make a lot of money-- you just have to try and hide how much it sucks until the customer signs the contract. I'm going to stop myself from going on a tirade right now. Maybe later.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

2005-03-17T17:59:43Z

Yet another post about MNFTIU

2005-03-17T15:25:25Z

Okay so like maybe this is a sign that I am starting to crack working an office gig and that I need to work at a cool Int0rweb technology company, but I almost cried tears of pain the first time I saw this comic, "My New Filing Technique is Unstoppable". Here's a sample of how awesome it is.

Googley Eyes

2005-03-11T18:07:52Z

Just had to post this because it's so cool looking and conceptually useful to refer to. A recent EyeTracking study has produced this interesting bit of visualization for your edification and amusement: "How people look at Google search results"

(click image for full-size)
Not surprising perhaps, but intriguing nevertheless. It'd be really interesting to see this study performed with different page layouts and contexts. There's some info on the study at the page linked to, but you have to write them to get more info. Maybe I'll ever even do that.

Privatizing Social Security

2005-03-10T21:39:39Z

Brokers are very excited at the prospect of the newly privatized Social Security system that "Bush-n-Pals™" are pushing for. I've been working for an investment company for the past year and I've learned that there is an institutional term for money which is invested by the not-so-wall-street-savvy-general-public. Traders call it dumb money. Dumb money has the same salacious connotation as "fresh meat" and generally means the biggest fees for Traders and the biggest losses for investors. But I suppose the nice thing about getting rid of Social Security and shifting that money into the hands of corporations is that... wait there actually isn't anything nice about that.

Free Software

2005-03-07T16:09:59Z

So this weekend, I restored one of my laptops to the factory defaults, i.e. ran the drive restore utilities to get Windows XP back to its happy, mostly-clutter-free, initial state. Rather than go and reinstall all those old, mostly pirated, Microsoft and Macromedia software cds, I decided I would try and see how far I could get my machine set up to be equally as useful, 'legally', and instead installed free and open-source software only.

First off, I got a copy of md5 command line utility from Fourmilab -- most of the free/open-source software is hosted on server mirrors and I want to make sure I don't download something which might have trojans or other things which might make my happy fresh installation a sad panda.

Instead of Microsoft Office, which is a bloated waste of space, I opted for an install of the OpenOffice.org suite. It managed to handle my MS Office documents no problem, including some powerpoints which I had to look at on Sunday. The light-weight-ness of OpenOffice makes it more pleasant to use, and in general it was trivial to find any needed equivalent MS Office functions. So bye-bye to MS Office-- good riddins.

I installed MySQL for my database engine, mostly because it's the free db engine I'm the most familiar with. I will probably try out other systems as the months go by, especially for Java projects, since there may be other engines which make better sense in the context of making Juju's installation hassle-free for end-users who don't want to have to worry about setting up a database engine just to run or try one program.

Since MySQL is just a back-end, I needed a good front-end client to do all my database setup and administration etc, so I am using Aqua Data Studio 4.0 which is just fantastic. It also supports many other database back-ends, so it makes a nice alternative to MS SQL's Enterprise Manager if you're just doing table creates/alters/selects etc. It supports all the other big guys like Oracle and Sybase and DB2 too. PostgreSQL is in there as well, and it will do generic JDBC/ODBC connections in addition to native support for the DBs listed.

Now that I'm doing more JSP, I went and put Apache/Jakarta/Tomcat on there for JSP development, which is hella less problematic of a setup than Apache/PHP was. No config files, just install and go. Nice :-) I installed the Java Development Kit (JDK). I decided to not install the bundle with NetBeans, Sun's IDE, mostly because it's kind of slow and tries to do a little too much out of the box.

So now I need a Java/JSP IDE, and I decided to install both jEdit and Eclipse Eclipse is a bit heavy and a little overwhelming, but I'm warming up to it. jEdit is much leaner and better suited to quick editing and testing, but of course it's java-centric whereas Eclipse is really universal or getting there.

Since I hate the AIM, MSN, and Yahoo! IM clients, and as much as I think Trillian is kick-ass in most respects, I decided to go with a more lightweight mulit-IM client called Miranda IM. It will let you connect to any/all of your IM accounts in one program, and it doesn't waste a lot of memory or diskspace. It doesn't have "Emoticon" support, which frankly, I'm quite okay with, mostly because it makes it easier to IM bits of code back and forth, since I don't have to worry about smileys eating all of my colons.

Last, but not least, of course, I got Firefox on there. Obviously this isn't just because it's free, but certainly I didn't install Opera. That should be enough said about browsers. If you're still using Internet Explorer then, well, I doubt you even read this far!

So that's the free software round-up for now. The best part about switching to this free software, is that most of it is cross-platform, which means I'll be using the same stuff whether I switch to Linux, Solaris, or Mac! Now that's freedom :-) w00t

Let there be Juju

2005-03-02T19:27:09Z

So I've taken the first big step in giving form to, what up until now I was calling "my open source project" or "project one". I registered and submitted my project description to SourceForge under the GPL. With apologies to readers who were bored the first time I described my project, I now post my project application here in the hopes a more terse and hopefully readable description might serve as a beacon to anyone in the blogosphere who finds this through a Technorati watchlist or whatever. So without further ado, I give you the juju.sourceforge.net application:

Project Information
-------------------

1. Submitter: brendanavery

2. Project UNIX Name: juju

3. Project Descriptive Name: Juju

4. License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

License other:

5. Project Description: Juju is a personal/collaborative knowledge management engine combining principles of Wiki and the Semantic Web. The initial version is produced in Java with support for most common relational database engines (initial testing performed with MySQL.)

6. Registration Description:

I created Juju initially as a personal information manager, out of the desire to house the many varied bits and pieces of data that I come across every day in a single data environment. I was dependent on too many specialized "silos" of information with limited or non-existent capability for interoperability and repurposing.

Initially, the Wiki concept had me. It's ease of use ultimately trumped all of the various content-management and knowledge-management alternatives, but Wiki implementations didn't have a formal system to capture the nature of the relationships modeled by the linking from page to page. A link from one page to another was just a link, lacking definition, and provided no way to model the resulting web as anything but a flat web.

What I really wanted was a way to describe a link. For example, lets say we had a page called "LukeSkywalker". On that page there might be a link to "DarthVader". I wanted a way to record a description of the relationship between Luke and Darth using some kind of easy in-line markup. I was aware of the Semantic Web, which uses RDF triples to define relationships, but the syntax was very non-Wiki and extraordinarily ugly-- far too complicated for the casual user (let alone a 20+ year computer programming veteran like myself!)

I decided to make my own Wiki which allowed entries to be descriptively linked. So on the "LukeSkywalker" page, our "DarthVader" link could be written like "DarthVader>>Father". This makes it possible to query the system for things like "?Who>>Father>>LukeSkywalker" and get an answer. With enough information, we could query the system to find out all of the fathers of Jedi Knights, "?Who>>Father>>?Jedi && JediKnight>>Occupation>>?Jedi".

The possibilities are actually quite extraordinary once you start playing with the concept. What's even weirder is that the technology to do it is not complicated and yet I haven't EVER seen it done in a simple and usable way (at least to my liking.) And I have tried hundreds of different software packages in the search for something like this.

So simply put, Juju aims at solving the "too-many information silos" problem by providing a simple Wiki-like database engine with powerful querying and summarization functions, to bring the data to life in a way that is useful for casual users and extraordinarily powerful for people who want to take the simple framework to the limit.

Juju is written in Java and was designed for a MySQL database, though it should support any common database engine through JDBC. It is designed to be usable as an engine to plug into other software and will ship with a simple desktop client GUI and (eventually) a Web Interface.

Juju draws its inspiration from many sources, most notably: Wiki, Semantic Web, RCS (Revision Control System), CVS (Concurrent Version System), Blogging Systems (such as Blogger, Livejournal, and MovableType), SQL (Structured Query Language), and THE/Archy (www.raskincenter.org).

[end]

Status
------
Your request should be reviewed by SourceForge.net staff in the next two business days (9AM to 5PM, Monday through Friday). Response regarding your project (notice of rejection/approval) will be posted to your >My SourceForge.net Projects page (accessible via the My SF.net link at the top of each site page). No email notification will be provided about approval/rejection of your project.

More to come.

Test-Driven Development

2005-03-01T21:54:14Z

Now that I'm starting to do some real Java coding again, one thing I am excited about is the ability to actually get back to Test-Driven Development, being able to write formal unit-tests for my code (i.e. write Tests before Code). The code I work on at work in ColdFusion was initially written by 50 monkeys with a handy copy of "Learn ColdFusion in 24 Hours" and no foresight, and even so, it's such a pain-in-the-butt to do automated unit testing for all-in-one web-page/processing web-scripts. It's just amazing how much more enjoyable and sane it is to work on a real development platform again.

Why did I wait so long to get back into Java again? (*slaps self*)

Some clues for GUI Developers/Designers

2005-03-01T19:15:46Z

Here's a clear example of why Apple is better for the user than Microsoft: they publish online (html and PDF download) a freely available, coherent, and insightful developer/design style-guide called "OSX Human Interface Guidelines". Is it any wonder why users claim to /enjoy/ their Mac's and why Windows software often winds up looking like this utter piece of sh** called PersonalPro from Topiary software (not only is it prohibitively expensive to purchase-- re: call for details --it's billed as a knowledge-management/sharing solution, but it ultimately only helps you manage and share your growing contempt for hellishly poor usability design -- DIE DIE DIE!)

I suggest, with all the unfortunately necessary and unrestrainable contempt and patronizing tone due, that Topiary take a step back and realize how sad their product is and pay a professional to redesign the user interface or please get out of the software business as there are employees out there somewhere who are being forced to utilize your horrendous digital pile of crap. Maybe you guys could read the design guidelines -- they may be for Apple developers, but you can use all the help you can get.

Am I done spewing bile? Yes. Calm now.

This is just another reason I'm really looking forward to kissing Windows goodbye. There's too much of this kind of junk going on in Windows application space, especially for niche industries. Too many amateur developers releasing products that ruin people's work experience. I have to admit I'm still a little scared of completely switching out since I'll be flying blind when I go to Mac when it comes to system troubleshooting (something I have sadly become altogether too familiar with on Windows, but perhaps there will be less system-troubleshooting on a Mac? Wishful thinking?)

Jef Raskin, you will be missed

2005-02-28T16:44:02Z

One of my computer heroes died on Saturday. Jef Raskin. I first learned about him after reading his book, The Humane Interface, which is about Human Computer Interaction in general as well as a kind of manifesto portending a possible new era in the way we use computers. After reading this book I started reading a lot of the things he had written and put him right at the top of my heroes list. (actually the "Woz" is still my #1, but Jef was a close second.) If you don't know about Jef and are even remotely interested in computer technology and things of that nature, you should really check out his website. RIP JR.

Busy Week (in my head)

2005-02-28T16:33:02Z

Been about 6 days since my last post -- What's been going on? Well I've been spending my free time ramping up my Java/JSP proficiency as I've been reviewing the job opps for ColdFusion and PHP and they aren't all that great (at least here in the Chicago area, which is where I'm going to be for probably another six-months or more) and Java is just more in demand. I wanted to focus my learning energies on ramping up on Ruby, but it's just not practical timing. Ruby will be waiting for me in the coming months after I'm better situated.

So now that my focus has been on Java, I'll be (re)coding the version 1 of my open source "semantic wiki" project in Java instead of PHP or Ruby. I think this will actually be a cool thing for a few reasons: 1) It will really let me improve my fluency in Java and JSP. 2) I'll be able to package most of the engine as a CFX tag for ColdFusion so I can use it for potential ColdFusion MX/Blackstone projects as well as Java/JSP projects. 3) After the core engine is done, I could easily do up some Swing/GUI and incorporate the engine into a desktop version.

In other news, my iPod has radically/subtly altered my whole world! I no longer spend any time at work messing around with finding a good source for audio or deal with streaming or software problems, which means I can block out the distractions of the office without getting distracted by software or hunting for content.

Since I have about 45 gigs of mp3s at home and growing, but only have 20 gigs of space on my iPod, I set up a 2000 random mp3 "smart" playlist which syncs my iPod up a little differently every time. I also have set up a "smart" playlist which contains only tracks that have been rated "1 star" so that if I hear something thats bad quality or just plain sucks I can rate it on the fly with my iPod and when I sync it up I can delete those crap mp3s and save some space. I also rate the best ones as 5 stars which is another Playlist that stays syncd, so I always have my Best Mp3s. There's lots of other "tricks" or tips I could recommend -- perhaps when I have my REAL website (which will be a product of my semantic wiki) then I will post a section on iPod.

Until then I am just frickin lovin it!

Also -- I finally got started listening to "Podcasts". More on that later after I have some to recommend.

Time to get back to work. Have a great monday.

brendanavery @ 2005-02-22T09:01:00

2005-02-22T15:07:52Z

So it was my birthday on Sunday the 20th and my girl threw me a big party with all my friends and she and her wonderful mom got me a damn iPod and I am the luckiest jerk in the universe. I love you, sweety!

Boy, this iPod kicks ass too. It's the U2 special edition black-n-red one and its pretty hawt. I just loaded 17 gigs of crap on it last night before I went to bed and just threw it on shuffle mode and am happier than clams. (if one clam is happy, then more clams must be happier right...?)

Anyways, thanks to everybody that came to the party -- Especially a big thanks to Mike and Allen of the Bitter Tears for playing special "Brendanized" versions of the Bitter Tears songs. I'm sad I didn't think to record it, but perhaps its better this way... ;-)

Search Engines: Secret vs Open (as in Source)

2005-02-18T22:32:21Z

I was just thinking about the fact that all of the major search engines are essentially gigantic closed proprietary systems. Even Google, which talks about major points of its algorithm, basically operates as a big black box. Sure there are thousands of books and articles and opinions out there on the subject of SEO (Search Engine Optimization), and even the search providers themselves offer guidelines and caveats and terms of use/abuse-- but essentially how they function is kept a secret, ostensibly in the interests of preserving the intellectual property and interests of the companies which provide those services.

But what impact does the secrecy of the search company operations/algorithms have on the usefulness of those services? On the one hand, keeping some secrets gives the companies the option (and not all of them appear to capitalize too much on the option) to thwart abuse of the service which occurs via link-spam, meta-tag/keyword spam, and other forms of misrepresentation of content for the purpose of search index manipulation.

On the other hand, it is precisely because of the closed nature of the search algorithms and policies that so many people try everything under the sun to manipulate the system, which turns SEO into some kind of mystical discipline instead of a commonly understood process. This creates real frustration for people who have no interest in intentionally abusing the system, but because of the lack of absolute policy/algorithmic information are unable to get indexed in one or more systems.

It could perhaps be said that Open systems are the easiest to find weaknesses in and exploit --but only insofar as they are not capable of being designed to curtail exploitation. Is it possible to design and maintain a successful, useful, public search engine with a published algorithm? Could it be economically viable? Does it already exist? Are there applications for which an Open search system is a better or worse choice?

I tend to have tunnel vision on the issue of Open vs. Secret systems, as I have as a knee-jerk emotional reaction to the idea of sharing and Open-ness is what life is all about-- let alone the Internet and even Searching (after all the purpose of search engine is to enable the sharing of information, right?) But even if I am biased, I think it is really the kind of situation which probably has a lot of hidden factors that could only really be brought to light if the project to create a truly Open (as in Source) web search engine was actually undertaken.

Update: Right before I clicked Post on this, I decided to quickly Google for 'open source search engine' and I found an article on SearchEngineWatch.com from Sept 11, 2003 which identifies www.nutch.org as one current attempt at this. Promising?