iBrasten

First, I should mention that Mac OS X Tiger is on Amazon.com for pre-sale. I have no intention of buying it off Amazon, I think it’s more fun to go sit in line with a bunch of other freaks at the Apple store or Best Buy the day it comes out. But, nevertheless, though I’d mention it. No official release date has been mentioned, but it is widely expected to be mid to end of April. It’s fun to see Mac OS X being the #1 top selling software product on Amazon though, if temporary.

Let It Go I would like to think that between listening to NPR in the morning and Fox News at night I get a pretty balanced view of the world. That’s something I try very hard to do. Often I prefer dialoging with people who disagree with me than those who agree. After all, I already KNOW why I subscribe to theory or believe system X, I want to know why someone else doesn’t. Maybe I’ve missed something. Maybe I’m wrong.

That said, NPR had a big spot on this morning about the Iraq War and intelligence failures and such. Some report just came out in the last couple days that basically affirms everything all the OTHER reports and investigations have concluded… that the intelligence community was VERY wrong, that there were no WMDs, and - importantly - that the administration did not interfere with or pressure in any way the intelligence community to generate the answers they wanted to here. But of course, the NPR folks don’t want us to believe that particular portion of the report (or of any other reports). All that matters was we were wrong, and therefore President Bush is Hitler.

I, for one, don’t really mind. The left has gone so completely overboard and become so intellectually dishonest in their arguments that they risk making themselves irrelevant. Which would not necessarily be a good thing since they have some good ideas we need to hear. They are the only ones really pushing for good environmental policies, after all. But seriously, they need to begin picking their battles a little better.

This is just a rambling post…

Software is a strange industry. It’s a combination of art and science that you won’t find in a lot of industries. See, most developers think of themselves as artists. They build their art, line by line, section by section as any other artist. They imagine, they are inspired, and they code of gut instincts a lot of times. They, like any artist, look at an empty canvas and see what could be, what might be, what should be. And they work to make it be.

But development is also hard core science. It’s engineering. It’s building a structure, framework by framework, that must perform specific requirements under estimated likely stresses and achieve measurable results. It should be built on common best-practices and design patterns.

All that said, there are four Java User Groups (JUG) within reasonable distance to me that I’ve signed up for. Seattle, Olympia, Vancouver B.C., and Portland. Between the four of them, I hope to hit one or two every month that interest me. I really believe that networking is one of the most important aspects to being a software developer. They tell you that’s the best way to get jobs, but even beyond that, it keeps one in the loop with regards to technology, best-practices, and even other events and ways to network further.

In April I plan on hitting both the Seattle and Portland JUGs. SeaJUG will be discussing AJAX, which is really just a fancy name for the new (or old-but-new-again) method of web development recently made popular by the geniuses at Google (see the scrolling features of maps.google.com, or Google Suggest). AJAX stands for “Asynchronous JavaScript and XML”. A bit of a stretch, eh? Yeah. Well, us developers love our acronyms. Anyway, PJUG will be discussing JDO in J2EE. I’ve never used JDO or Hibernate, but I was under the impression that Hibernate was going to largely replace JDO. Of course, JDO is an official spec, while Hibernate is a product. Similar to JavaServer Faces (spec) and Struts (product).

Oh well, enough rambling, back to work.

This guy gets it. Some excerpts:

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All the best hackers I know are gradually switching to Macs. My friend Robert said his whole research group at MIT recently bought themselves Powerbooks. These guys are not the graphic designers and grandmas who were buying Macs at Apple’s low point in the mid 1990s. They’re about as hardcore OS hackers as you can get.

The reason, of course, is OS X. Powerbooks are beautifully designed and run FreeBSD. What more do you need to know? ... So what, the business world may say. Who cares if hackers like Apple again? How big is the hacker market, after all?

Quite small, but important out of proportion to its size. When it comes to computers, what hackers are doing now, everyone will be doing in ten years. Almost all technology, from Unix to bitmapped displays to the Web, became popular first within CS departments and research labs, and gradually spread to the rest of the world. ... The intervening years have created a situation that is, as far as I know, without precedent: Apple is popular at the low end and the high end, but not in the middle. My seventy year old mother has a Mac laptop. My friends with PhDs in computer science have Mac laptops. And yet Apple’s overall market share is still small.

Though unprecedented, I predict this situation is also temporary.

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... YES. That’s what I’ve been SAYING. :)

There are a couple reasons for the reverse bell curve trend. 1) The “middle” is driven in large part by businesses, of which Apple has yet to penetrate. (This will change over the next 5 years or so). 2) The second largest driver of the middle market are PC hobbyists. These are the people that build cheap PCs for all their friends and family, and have no interest in switching to a platform that would instantly make them irrelevant. (This I don’t see changing that soon, but I don’t see them being as big of a factor in time.)

Software version numbers are weird things.  They’re completely subjective and are often used more as marketing tools than anything.  As a tendency, open-source software tends to be extremely conservative (or honest?) with their numbering.  After Mozilla hit v1.0, it’s steadily made it’s way through 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, etc until it’s final resting place of 1.7.   If Mozilla had been a Microsoft product, it would be Mozilla 7.0 by now.

The other strange things about version numbers is the need to reset them somehow after a certain amount of time.  Note:  Windows: 1.x, 2.x, 3.x, 95, 97, 2000, XP.   Or Mac OS: 1.x – 9.x, X.0, X.1, X.2, X.3.  Photoshop: 1.x-7.x, CS, and soon, CS2.

All this is understandable…  Who wants to be using Netscape 11 or Office 13 on Windows 7?  On the other hand, might be more simple that way.  Or if you’re into open source software, you’re already using OpenOffice 1.1 and Firefox 1.0.1 on a Linux 2.6 kernel.


....  this is a pointless post.  But oh well.

I don’t watch much TV. Pretty much the only shows I watch religiously are Battlestar Galactica and reruns of Fraiser (they’re new to me, didn’t watch during it’s original run). I just don’t have the time to watch TV shows. Beyond that, I strongly dislike medical drama shows. See, growing up I had the Bubonic Plague, HIV, and at one point during a MacGuiver episode, my heart stopped and has never restarted. I’ve also suffered from tumors, undiagnosed brain aneurisms, and diabetes. Of course, as I got older I realized that all I’m really suffering from is being a hypochondriac. While I’m practically over that now, watching medical dramas tends to bother me.

I wanted you to know all of that so that when I tell you that Grey’s Anatomy was one of the best series pilots I’ve ever seen, you’ll understand the full weight of that statement.

I won’t give you a detailed review, because you either saw it or you didn’t, and either way my review won’t do you any good. For those who didn’t, the quick description is a show that followed a group of medical interns through their internship at a Seattle hospital.

Anyway, you MUST check it out.

’... and it’s oh-and-two on Richie Sexson… say fans, do you feel like you have two strikes on you? Call Consumer Credit Counseling today!.... and 0-2 pitch, swung on, and this ball is GONE…. That Silver Bullet Blast brought to you by Budweiser, enjoy a nice cold Budweiser today. And that’ll be it for the pitcher as the manager goes out to make the pitching change.. this call to the bullpen brought to you by Nextel… Beltre steps in and LINES a hit, SNARED by the shortstop, and THAT’S our Penzoil Protection Play! Stay tuned for the Aflac trivia question, coming up right after the Jorve Roofing roof report for Safeco Field.’

... oh yes, baseball season is almost upon us.

Here’s an idea I’m throwing around… Sony Ericsson is releasing a little roving camera with bluetooth control shortly (pictured below). The idea is to play with it from your phone. It’s really just a toy for uber-geeks.

But I can’t imagine it would be terribly hard to control it from a Java application. Java has bluetooth APIs and while I’ve never used them, I’m a smart guy and I think I could figure it out. So here’s the fun idea. I could set that guy in my condo somewhere and relay commands/video between it and a web page, allowing me (or anyone I want) to drive the little guy around my condo and take pictures from anywhere.

Interesting thought, eh? The thing even has little HEADLIGHTS, so it’s useable at night. Anyway, something to consider.

Kudos to these guys. I’m sure that was NOT easy.

Did you know that Seattle buys more sunglasses than any other city in America? Or so I’ve heard. But the truth is that the sun here in Seattle is brutal, in a slightly different way than most cities.

See, us Seattle-ites only actually SEE the sun for about 45 minutes each day. Sunset. That’s the only time that the sun is low enough to not get blocked by Seattle’s protective shielding (clouds), yet is still visible above the horizon. I will rely on my artistic abilities to demostrate what I mean:

“So?” you ask? Every city deals with sunsets, right? True, except that Seattle’s protective shielding also acts as a resource sustainment system (it RAINS) all day long. So now you have water coating the city, and a sun peaking below the clouds. And with that, you get this:

DG says here and on loafe that George is doing well!  We’re very happy to hear that!

Also, check the WebCam link to the right—>

I securely fastened the camera this time so we should get some good shots of Hobbes.  I also opened the shades slightly to let more light in the room.  Forgive the mess though, this is kind of my "throw-anything-that-doesn’t-have-a-spot-in-there" room.

Recent nightly cable news ratings, in viewers:

FNC O’REILLY—2,566,000
FNC HANNITY/COLMES—2,206,000
FNC GRETA—2,101,000
FNC SHEP SMITH —1,604,000
CNN LARRY KING—1,529,000
FNC BRIT HUME—1,426,000
COMEDY DAILY SHOW—1,075,000
CNN AARON BROWN—847,000
CNN COOPER—670,000
MSNBC HARDBALL—571,000
MSNBC ABRAMS—477,000
MSNBC OLBERMANN—434,000
CNNHN NANCY GRACE—386,000
E! JACKSON TRIAL—347,000
MSNBC SCARBOROUGH – 305,000

Any surprises there?  I – for one – am surprised that Greta and Shep are beating Brit…  it’s good to see Hannity/Colmes beating Hardball 4:1 though. 

Worth noting: O’Reilly is an independent traditionalist, Hannity/Colmes is a balanced right/left show, Greta is known to be liberal, Brit Hume is conservative… Shep Smith I don’t know about.  But hardly the right-wing Bush-propogandist network that some would have you think.

Though I was sad to see my favorite show, Your World with Neil Cavuto, is not on that list.  I s’pose business news isn’t as popular as political pundits.

Took another trip down to Portland last weekend. Didn’t take many pictures, but what few I took I posted on my .Mac page, as always. Check them out!

Well, it isn’t so much a failure as a mistake, but I tried to set my webcam up as a Kitty-Cam this morning to catch Hobbes doing Hobbes-y stuff. She’s usually doing something worth spying on. But if you check out the webcam link to the right, you can see that sometime after I left this morning, my webcam fell off my computer. Or more accurately, it tipped over, as of the time of this writing, that’s still the top of the computer you’re seeing. Oh well. :)

I was just reading this morning that Apple market share in PCs for the month of January was 2.9%. That’s up from 2.2% the previous quarter. Furthermore, that’s NOT taking in to account Mac Mini sales which have been flying off shelves.

Anyway, Fortune says Apple will hit 5% GLOBAL market share this quarter, and increase throughout 2005. To show you the significance of that, 2004’s top-5 manufacturers were:

Global Sales 1) Dell, 2) HP, 3) IBM, 4) Fujitsu, 5) Acer

US Sales 1) Dell, 2) HP, 3) IBM, 4) Gateway, 5) Apple

If Fortune’s numbers are accurate, the likely lineup for Q1 2005 would be:

Global Sales 1) Dell, 2) HP, 3) IBM/Lenova, 3) Apple, 5) Fujitsu

US Sales* 1) Dell, 2) HP, 3) Apple, 4) IBM/Lenova, 5) Gateway

* IBM is expected to lose a little market share due to the sale of it’s PC division. Given their current 6.5%ish share, Apple has a realistic shot at capturing #3 from IBM/Lenova. * Apple’s US share has not been estimated. However, in the past their US sales share was twice that of their global share. While I’m not suggesting Apple will hit 10% market share, I believe it’s fair to estimate they will capture the 5.8% or higher necessary to move into the #3 spot.

I’m going to get all random on you.  Hold on tight.

Firstly, I decided to list the first few websites that pops up with I type "www." into my location bar.  Why?  I don’t know:

• www.google.com
• www.news.com
  
• www.macrumors.com
• www.slashdot.org
• www.brastensager.com
• www.wilwheaton.net
• www.seattlemariners.com

I don’t think that’s in order of most viewed, because www.apple.com is 30 or so sites down and that can’t be right.

... Speaking of Apple …

There’s a method to my madness after all.  A couple interesting points about Apple that I’ve been following.  Firstly, it has been so funny to watch all the reaction over Apple coming out with a 2-button mouse.  (they haven’t yet, but are expected to shortly).  Mac users don’t really care…  I’ll probably buy one but I haven’t been dying for one.  The Mac users that DO prefer 2 buttons (or more) have been using third party mice with no complaints. 

The real fuss has been from PC users.  "It’s about time!"....  "Welcome to the real world."...  funny stuff!  I – for one – feel bad for them that their operating system requires such extensive use of the context menu.  But whatever. :)   For what it’s worth, the short period of time I DID use a third party mouse on my Mac, I linked the second button to Expose, NOT the context menu.

Admittedly Apple DOES need to come up with some kind of scroll mechanism.  That’s one feature that’s universal across OSes.  But I personally think they’ll have scrolling capabilities on this new mouse.  This thing’s supposedly been in some state of development since 2000.

... also …

Rumor sites are saying now that  Apple employees, specifically those working on Mac OS X Tiger, have begun taking vacations and throwing wrap up parties.  Which means, of course, that they’re almost done.  Which also means that the April 15th release date rumored might ACTUALLY be CORRECT!

SO. EXCITED.

If you don’t use Mac OS X already, you probably wouldn’t understand.  Conversely, if you DO, and you’ve been paying attention to the Tiger demos, you probably will agree with me that Tiger is going to completely change the way you use your computer (largely, at least).  The 1-2 punch of Spotlight and Dashboard will be significant. 

... finally …

New sales figure estimates are coming in… I’ve now heard a revision from 500,000 iPod shuffles to 1.8 million iPod shuffles, in addition to 4 million iPods…  that’s nearly 6 million new iPods this quarter being sold.  Worth noting that Apple only sold 8 million iPods in the entire 2004 calendar year.  Also, Mac mini’s are flying off the shelf, but apparently Apple’s OTHER machines are still up 15%.  Meaning that the Mac mini is not cutting into the iMac’s sales.

Here’s the Demotivator of the day:

I finally got around to watching Ray. Nobody would watch it with me, so I had to watch it by myself. Hence it took until tonight to finally get around to it.

Anyway, it was definitely worth the wait. Jamie Foxx kicked ass, no doubt about it. Definitely a much darker movie than I expected, but I guess I never new Ray Charles lived such a dark life. It also seemed to end a little abruptly, but overall one of the better movies I’ve seen recently. If you’re into good stories and great acting, I strongly recommend watching this one.

In response to something DG commented on, I should mention that in fact my camera DOES have motion detection. Currently I’m just using it more as a security setting, so the sensitivity is turned down to where Charger couldn’t trigger it. But a person triggers it and photos are snapped and immediately emailed to me. (After all, photos are no good if a thief steals my computer too, so they get transfered offsite within a second or two). Some examples from this morning:

So, I was complaining to Squire the other day that Portland has almost no decent webcams. I mentioned the first thing I’ll do when I move down there is to set up a webcam, assuming I get into a condo high enough to get a good city view. But I realized that I’ve got this fantastic Apple iSight camera sitting at home, and because nobody I know has iSight/iChat, it pretty much is useless. So it just sits there on my computer.

so anyway, I pointed it out my spare bedroom’s window. The view is uninspiring, but at least the thing is DOING something, y’know? On my sidebar, under “pages”, is a link to the WebCam. Have a looksie.

This webcam, however pointless, is pointed out the window of my spare bedroom. It is updated every minute or so.

For a brief period in time (VERY brief) I kept a blog going under an assumed identity. It sucked, and it’s location and identity shall remain unknown, but as I started writing a blog entry today I realized that I was essentially re-writing something that I had already written in the other blog. While I was disappointed that a year later I was still feeling the same feelings, I have decided to simply repost what I wrote the first time:

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There are many things in life that I intend on accomplishing. Primarily having to do with the work and financial aspects of my life. And I deeply fear the possibility that I will never accomplish them.

See, I want to be successful. Call me materialistic… but I do. And I don’t mean to be a millionaire, though I wouldn’t object. But I want to be able to drive a fine car (Black BMW 325, please), live in an upper-class condo in the city, eat at the fine dining establishments around the city… buy some toys, and have the time to enjoy them. That’s my vision of success for my life, and I want it BAD. I don’t demand a horde of cash to live of off the rest of my life. I’m not looking for the lotto jackpot here, but I want to have my fingers in enough different pies that I can enjoy the life I just described without much worry. Now, I KNOW these desires are materialistic. I know they’re shallow. I don’t pretend that there’s no element of greed involved, of COURSE there is. But it’s just the way I’ve been. And it’s just what I’ve always wanted.

The downside to all of this is I simply have not considered the possibility of never reaching these goals. I’ve always known they will come to pass, it’s just a matter of time. Only recently have I realized that’s not necessarily the case. And I have never prepared myself for the possibility that I may never acheive that success.

See, there are some people who can accomplish ANYTHING they want. They just DO it. I know some of these people. But I am NOT one of them. I am, however, in the level just below that. I have the intellectual capability and skill level to work and fight my way up to a very comfortable living if I wanted. Accomplishing the successful life I want would take combining the life I CAN create, and mixing in “factor X”.. be it luck, a fortunate event, good timing, etc. What scares me is just that… in order to get what I want, it will require some element of luck. I’m not the kind of person that can create a situation in which I can succeed. I AM the kind of person that can plan and scheme and see a situation coming, and jump on it when it shows up. I’ve done this before. That’s how I got myself out of debt. That’s how I’d have to become financially successful in the future.

But, I am inherently dependent on a situation presenting itself – if ever so subtly. And I fear that the right situations needed to accomplish the successes in life I desire might never present itself…

... and that scares the hell out of me.

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I’ve finally figured out the single most useless job in Seattle… traffic reporters. I mean, common. In fact, I wrote this little application for cell phones called CellFLOW that lets you check Seattle traffic real-time from your phone… and even I don’t use it. Why? Because everyone who’s lived in Seattle knows what traffic here is like.

6am-9am: South-bound: I5 is slow from downtown Everett to 175th, and from Northgate to the ship-canal bridge. 405 is slow off and on from Woodinville into Bellevue. North-bound: I5 is slow through the Southcenter and Boeing field to about downtown. 405 is slow from the I5 interchange, stop and go through the Renton S-curves up to Factoria.

4pm-6:3pm: The Opposite.

There’s always a disabled vehicle mid-span 520, and a truck/car injury accident somewhere on Highway 18.

And for those of you wondering which bridge to take over the water… the answer is ALWAYS I90. 520 is ALWAYS jammed up both directions from 6am-9pm.

The eruption was a little exciting yesterday, but being in Seattle I was too far away to see it. It was visible from Portland, as I mentioned earlier, and other areas. Mount St. Helens is about 3 hours south-southeast of Seattle and 1 hour north-northeast of Portland or so.

Work Work has been interesting. The two companies we were counting on to go live have backed out, and we’re trying now to switch gears and finish up all the required functionality for another customer, in hopes that they will go live within a few months. We’ve apparently now scaled back our goals to 4 customers a year. Furthermore, I just found out that we have contractually obligated ourselves to BEA WebLogic for the foreseeable future. I don’t understand why business people make technical decisions. Plus, to exacerbate matters, they’ve apparently been lying to me for the last year and a half. They’ve been offering little teasers of switching to an open-source application server soon, and now that we have the time to do it, they drop the contractual obligation bombshell.

Whatever.

Also, I got cut from consideration for a specific job in Portland yesterday. We’ll call it Company W. They, of course, claim that my background is “compelling” but that they don’t have any positions suitable for my goals. Which I understand.

I do have to wonder if not having my 4-year degree is going to get in the way. But, I could either have a 4-year degree right now and less than a year of experience, or I can have the 4 1/2+ years of experience I have now. That was a decision I had to make, and I chose the experience. Right or wrong? That remains to be seen. I’m definitely a BETTER developer now for having gone the route that I did.. it’s a question of being a more attractive candidate.

Some pictures of the eruption:


As seen from Portland:

Mount St. Helens is erupting!  Ash cloud estimated at 22,000 feet high, visible from Portland and other surrounding areas.  No more information at the moment, but will keep you informed.

Recent Image:

Need 5 minutes of relaxation? At work? At Home? Follow these steps:

1) Turn off some lights, shut any doors you can to keep noise out. 2) Turn your computer’s speakers up to a loud, but comfortable level. Use headphones if at work. 3) Close your eyes, rest your head in your hands if possible. 4) Play this song and remain that way until the song is finished. 5) When song is over, take a deep breath and face the rest of the day refreshed!

Sorry everyone… I’ve just had nothing really to say. I’ll mention a few things and then I need to go to sleep.

Firstly, in a revelation that should surprise exactly no one, Jess and I have decided to do this “official dating” thing everyone else seems to be doing. :) Not a gigantic leap from where we were for a while anyway, but this makes it a lot easier to explain to people!

Secondly, Ryan and I came up with a pretty slick little monetary system based on coffee. It all started with me stating that they should make a $3 coin/bill and call it a “Mocha”. So, that’s the base unit… 1 Mocha == 3 Dollars. That said, here’s the current monetary scale:

10 Mochas = 1 Bag of Beans
10 Bag of Beans = 1 Coffee Pot
10 Coffee Pots = 1 Espresso Machine
10 Espresso Machines = 1 Coffee Stand

So, for example, I make 1 Bag of Beans an hour, or - roughly - 2 Coffee Stands and 3 Espresso Machines a year.

I also pay between 5-6 Espresso Machines a year in taxes, depending on various factors.

It’s TIME…. for BED.

A Place to Rest My Head

Well, my new bed showed up yesterday.  I still don’t have a metal frame for it or any bedding, that’s all "in the mail."  So we’ll see when I get that.  But I laid a bunch of blankets down last night and slept on it.  It’s strange having such a large bed.  I like it tho!  The only reason I was 25 years old and still sleeping on a twin-size bed was because it felt like I didn’t have the room for anything bigger.  However, in the course of my massive spring cleaning (which, yes, I’m still finishing up) I managed to get rid of a bunch of things (including my precious ratties, but I think they’ll be MUCH happier at their new place).  Also, when you dump everything in your condo into the center of a room and start putting things back, you tend to find better places for everything… so it feels like you have less stuff.

Anyway, short story long, I had a huge empty master bedroom and a little tiny twin bed, so it was time to upgrade.

I’m not talking about offspring, I’m talking about people named Brasten.  See, as far as I know, I’m the only person on this earth named Brasten.  Brasten IS a surname, but the Brasten family tree seems to be centered on the east coast.   That’s not what I’m talking about anyway, I want people with the FIRST name of Brasten.

So I need your help!  Name your sons Brasten!