Digital gold… hah

From: Gary Cote (gary@cotecorner.com)
Subject: classified ad
Newsgroups: rec.humor.funny
Date: 2003-09-18 17:44:01 PST

For Sale:

Apple iPod
15 GB model, lightly used
167 songs loaded

The RIAA says it’s worth about $25 million.
I’ll let it go for $5 million, plus shipping.

Radiohead concert

This is a picture from the Radiohead concert that I went to last week at the Shoreline Amphitheater. As usual, I forgot my damn camera and had to resort to the shitty one on the mobile phone.

I obviously meant to put this picture up last week, but there were several hangups. The first was that I installed the OS X 10.2.8 update which broke all kinds of things including the ability to send files from my phone to my computer through Bluetooth (of course syncing and sending from the computer to the phone work fine). So then I tried to send over e-mail from my phone to myself. That didn’t work because the Cingular network is all funked up (I can’t even receive e-mails through it right now :\). The next option was to try to send it through IR on a friend’s PC. No go. IR port wouldn’t open. Finally, I just brought my Bluetooth dongle to class, plugged it into a friend’s Mac (she hadn’t yet applied the 10.2.8 update) and sent it to her computer. I’d like to say that all of the effort was worth it, but really, did you look at the picture?  :P

If I had time this would be the spot where I would go into a long rant about Radiohead and how they are one of my favorite bands of all time and blah blah blah, but most of you already know that, so I digress. Needless to say, the concert was excellent. I hope to see them again someday (hopefully next time I’ll have better seats and won’t forget my camera).

Fringe benefit

The future-proofing of my archives has turned out to have an advantage that I didn’t foresee. Previously, when browsing my site statistics, the frequency/number of hits was attached to a filename like “000134.php,” which is obviously very cryptic. But now, with the new system in place, I can immediately see which posts are receiving the most attention and can realize right away what the post is about.

I still need to go back through my site and change all of the internal links (those posts that link to other posts) to the new scheme. All of the old files still exist (e.g., 000134.php) so the links won’t break, but as soon as I change the (X)HTML and CSS of the archive template, the old files will undoubtedly render poorly.

They found Nemo

Digitally Imported

If you have never been to Digitally Imported, I strongly encourage you to check them out. I stumbled across this site a few years ago — it has grown exponentially and now includes 24-hour streams of everything from trance to modern jazz to classical.

I’m not sure there’s anything I like listening to more while studying/working than the vocal trance stream.

Drool

I’m assuming most of you are aware of the new 15″ PowerBook that was introduced a few days ago at Apple Expo 2003. What a brilliant machine. I’ve been working all week on trying to sell my current TiBook to a fellow student. I figure that I should be able to get the new one without paying much, if anything, out-of-pocket. My TiBook has the SuperDrive, but I have no problem getting the new Powerbook with just the Combo drive — new PowerBook with Combo drive and education discount = $1978.00. I should be able to get close to that for my current notebook. We’ll see though, there are other things that have to be taken care of before I can start thinking about that, though the longer I wait the less my current notebook will be worth. Grr.

The new model offers countless improvements to the TiBook:

• Aluminum alloy body
• Backlit keyboard (only on SuperDrive model)
• Ambient light sensor which adjusts the brightness of both the screen and the keyboard (only on SuperDrive model)
• Built-in Bluetooth
• FireWire 800 and USB 2.0
• 512K L2 cache
• ATI Mobility Radeon 9600
• 333MHz DDR SDRAM
• 802.11g

The biggest additions for me are the aluminum body and built-in Bluetooth. I find it incredibly annoying to have to plug in the dongle each time I need to connect my phone to the computer. Also, as I use my computer all the time in class, it would be really nice to pull out a Bluetooth mouse and be done with it; this goes for home use as well.

I’m assuming that the new model won’t suffer from the same keyboard-imprint-on-the-screen problems that the TiBook and iBook do, but that is yet to be determined.

In related news, Steve Jobs’ keynote from the expo was put online yesterday.

Future-proof your URIs

I’ve taken some steps to future-proof the archives of this site. The idea is that even as the underlying technology changes, the URI of the entries should not — links should work indefinitely. Out of the box, Movable Type does a bad job of future-proofing your archives as it simply puts the entry in a file (you give it the extension) named by the internal ID that MT uses (e.g., 000164.php). The problem with this is that it will break to all hell if and when you export/import your entries to a new MT setup on a different server — none of the links will point to the correct file as the internal ID of the file will have changed.

I wanted to setup a hierarchical structure for the archives that would include the title of the post and keep the filename out of the link. Now, instead of “/archives/000200.php” for this entry, I have “/archives/2003/09/15/futureproof_your_uris/.” You’ll notice that the filename has been removed and the URI now points to a directory. Under this directory resides an index.php file for that entry. In the future, if the technology changes (say I start using .xml instead of .php), I can make the needed modifications without breaking the link. If this interests you at all (it should!) and you use MT (you should!), then you can make the same changes to your site by following the instructions below.

Step One

Download and install the Regex plugin from Brad Choate.

Step Two

From MT’s control panel, go into “Weblog Config.” Choose the “Archiving” tab. Put the following in the “Archive File Template” field of the Individual “Archive Type”:

This will create the /year/month/day/title/index.php structure. You’ll want to use dirify=”1″ here as this will remove all spaces (and any other characters that can’t be used in directory names) and replace them with an underscore (some things aren’t replaced with underscores but are removed instead).

Step Three

For whatever file(s) you plan on using the archive link in, you need to add the following to the top of that file’s template:

<MTRegexDefine name="noExtension">s|/index\.[^/]+$|/|g</MTRegexDefine>

Whenever this is called (next step), it will remove the file part of the link (/title/index.php becomes /title/) before the URI is created, thus making the URI file-independent.

Step Four

The final step is calling the regex plugin. Wherever you use the archive link tags, you need to add the following to the tag: regex=”noExtension”

For example,

This does what was explained in step three above.

There you have it, future-proof URIs. As things change in the future, all you’ll need to do is modify/define the default file loaded for a directory. For instance, all I need now is one line in the .htaccess file: DirectoryIndex index.php.

First month of law school

71 cases have been read and briefed.

31,132 words (actual count) have been typed.

Ugh.

You might live in Silicon Valley if…

…you see a new Ferrari with a license plate that says “Jobs Suk” in the Starbucks parking lot.

(Picture taken with phone)

Sony Ericsson T616

It’s about that time again. That’s right, another mobile phone review. I’ll be discussing Sony Ericsson’s latest effort, the T616. As is usually the case, SE doesn’t disappoint.

At the outset I’d like to remove any doubt as to how I feel about this phone: the T616 is absolutely the best phone currently available (in the U.S.). There are only three phones that even come close to its feature set: its predecessor, the SE T68i, the SE P800, and the Nokia 3650, which is really no match as it has to be one of the ugliest phones I’ve ever seen, not to mention that it’s about twice the size of the T616.

It should be noted that the only difference between the T616 and the T610 is that the T610< operates at 900MHz, while the T616 uses the 850MHz band (both are triple-band GSM and can also use the 1800/1900MHz frequencies). I make the point only to clarify that they are exactly the same phone, save their antennas.

The biggest deal for me, coming from a Sony Ericsson T68i, was that SE fixed the damn calendar application so that it now correctly syncs with Apple’s iSync utility. I would not have bought the phone if this had not been fixed. Previously, with the T68i, all calendar entries would get shifted by one hour. This meant that after you did your first full sync, you would get two entries for every single appointment — an hour apart. Even though all is fixed now, I was still required to change the “Daylight Savings” setting to “1h Summertime.” I had to spend some time playing with these settings before everything was syncing correctly, but I haven’t had to touch it since I got it working. The PDA is dead; long live the smartphone (this isn’t really a smartphone, but… :).

I’ve had zero trouble using Bluetooth to connect the phone to my PowerBook. Apple’s Bluetooth support is quite remarkable. On top of syncing all of my information through Bluetooth, I also use it for Caller-ID and SMS sending/receiving through the computer. I simply open up the Address Book and click the Bluetooth icon. If a call comes in, I get a pop-up window on my computer that tells me who it is (I don’t have to take the phone out of my pocket to see who is calling). Similarly, if I’m sent a text message, the message will show up in a little window on my computer. If I want to send a text message to someone, I can simply open up the Address Book, right-click on a contact’s mobile phone number, and choose “send message.” When I send the message it is sent to my phone over Bluetooth and then from my phone to the contact. Very neat. All of this says nothing of the Clicker software.

The menuing system is faster and much more responsive than that of the T68i. There’s always a trade-off though — they removed the joystick counter from the secret menu.  :\

The T616 also adds a recurring alarm. You can give it a time and then select the day(s) of the week that you want the alarm to go off — perfect for me as I have to get up at the same time M-F. If, for whatever reason, you need to change the time of a particular day, you can do this without disturbing the recurring alarm. A great feature all around.

The battery life is very impressive, especially when you consider that it’s powering a fairly bright 16-bit color screen. I certainly can’t complain about its modest power consumption.

As is always the case, I have a few gripes. The first, and the one I’m most upset about, is the loudness of the speaker (during phone calls) — it’s rather low, even on the highest setting. I’ve read that this can be fixed with a firmware upgrade, but I’ve yet to find someone in the Bay Area who can do this (granted, I haven’t spent any time trying to find someone as I don’t have said time  :P). To add to that gripe, I’m also pissed that there is no speakerphone — this is perfectly doable given the loundess of the ringtones. Perhaps this too will be added in a future firmware update. I know this was one the big complaints with the T68i, so it surprises me that it wasn’t added to the T616, especially when the Nokia 7210, Nokia 7250 (both are tiny ‘candybar’ phones), and Sony Ericsson’s own P800 have this feature. No excuse.

Another major shortcoming is the limited amount of memory that comes with the phone. You are only alloted 2MB (though there is a “13-second trick” which can bump it up to 2.5MB). This might seem like a lot to some, but as soon as you start taking a few pictures, receiving (and saving) SMS messages, downloading J2ME/Mophun games, and playing with some themes, the memory dissipates quickly. I can’t say that I’ve run out of memory yet, but I know that some people really have to juggle to keep what they want on the phone.

As I’ve said in the past, I really don’t care about having a camera on my phone, but it just so happens that the best phones these days come with them (this is my third camera phone). If they had left this feature out, I would have still bought the phone — in fact, I would have liked the phone even more (it would have been cheaper and would have had one less thing that could break). Camera phones are nothing but a novelty to me; until they reach 3MP+ I just don’t care. Given all of that, I can’t really comment too much on this phone’s camera. It takes decent pictures (though the max resolution is 288×352), has a “night” mode, and offers three effects — B&W, negative, and sepia. It also has a self-timer. For the vanity in all of us, it comes with a small mirror (that plugs a hole in the back of the phone; defaulty plugged with a rubber stop) so that you can take pictures of yourself. If I want to send a picture to the computer, I simply choose, “send | via Bluetooth.” Done.

Lastly, I’d like to talk about the phone’s design. I think one would be hard-pressed to say that the phone isn’t easy on the eyes. It’s so simple and yet so perfect. Less is definitely more. The indented sides provide a great grip on the phone and also allow you to set it down horizontally on a surface to take a picture. I put up some hi-res photos (from SE’s site) — if that isn’t great design, I’m not sure what is.

Justin, the bartender

I present to you a little concoction I like to call, “No Life.” Enjoy.

Ingredients:

• 10 cups law school
• 1 teaspoon life

Directions:

1. Pour contents into spill-proof container.
2. Vigorously shake container until contents have mixed.

Be advised: Contents tend not to mix well and, despite your best efforts, might never coalesce.