Andy's Blog

Finally!

I finally managed to track down an iPod Shuffle today, at Target in Sunnyvale:

It is tiny and well designed and entirely awesome. But it appears to have given my mac some indigestion for some reason -- I suspect the new 1.1 firmware update. I have reverted back to 1.0, and it appears to be working just fine. I will have to investigate further. It was something of a kick in the pants that Mike was able to get it to work much easier on his Windows XP box than I was on my Mac.

-Andy.

Getting a little better at night photography

I still don't know how to use my camera, like at all, but Stan showed me a few things about it, and I'm getting better. I finally pulled off what I think is a decent night time picture of the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco:

The photo is still a little blurry, but way better than what I have been taking to date. The secret of this shot was that I balanced the camera on something solid -- like a makeshift tripod, so that it remained steady during the long exposure time.

I was out doing the tourist-like thing with Anjali and her friend Eva yesterday. We hit Tennessee Valley, the aforementioned palace, North Beach, and Ghiradelli. Not a bad way to spend your Saturday afternoon/evening. The weather even held as well -- we got rained on during our final trek from Ghiradelli to the car, but that was it.

-Andy.

Stan's Birthday

So, Stan recently turned 26, and so to celebrate, we all went down to S.F. last weekend and treated him to dinner:

The restaurant was an Indian joint called Rasoi. It was pretty good, which is starting to freak me out a little bit. I was really not about the whole Indian food thing when I moved out to California. Now I've been here almost two years, and while I won't say that I actually like Indian food -- it certainly isn't as terrible as it once seemed. And in fact, in the span of the last month, I've had Indian a total of 3 times. Amazing! The California virus lives on. When are we going to have a cure for that?

-Andy.

Posted Pictures

I have finally put up some pictures from my recent travels:

• My trip to Germany, working for EDS
• The side-trip that I took to London, to visit Fredrik
• Pictures from Nitin's wedding reception

That is all.

-Andy.

Booty

Last week brought many new material possessions into my life (a false, yet wholly inescapable pursuit). I received one round of Amazon purchases, and the other was a valentine's gift from my family. So, what I'm listening to/watching now pretty-much revolves around this list:

• Music:
• Pretty Girls Make Graves - New Romance
• Woven Hand - Consider the Birds
• Massive Attack - Danny the Dog
• Massive Attack - Special Cases [CD-SINGLE]
• Brand New - Deja Entendu
• Snow Patrol - Final Straw
• The Soundtrack of Our Lives - Behind The Music
• The Futureheads - The Futureheads
• DVD:
• Wonderfalls - The Complete Viewer Collection
• Book:
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Tales of the Slayers (Graphic Novel)

I'll try and do some reviews once I have completely digested all of this stuff, but I can give the early analysis. So far, Woven Hand (Chris certainly called that one) and Pretty Girls Make Graves are taking the early lead amongst the CDs. Wonderfalls totally rocks. And the Buffy graphic novel was painfully short (but quite good).

-Andy.

Comments disabled

I've temporarily disabled the ability to post new comments to all of the blogs hosted on redefine. The comment spam is getting pretty bad, and I need some time to regroup on a technical level, and come up with a different anti-spam solution other than a blacklist. I think that like Carl before me, I'm going to go with TypeKey. This appears to require MovableType 3.x, however, which requires both money, and time, since I can't use the FreeBSD ports collection to install it. Hmmm...

-Andy.

"A Very Long Engagement"

I finally got a chance to see the new Jean-Pierre Jeunet / Audrey Tautou flick, "A Very Long Engagement" at the cinema saver last weekend. I thought that the movie was very good. I wouldn't say that it is as much of an in-your-face visual knockout that Amélie was, but that is okay. I felt that the was well shot, in that the cinematography really brought me into the setting -- especially the trenches of World War I.

I went with Mike to see the movie, and he remarked afterwards that it was such a "chick flick", that we are probably engaged as a side-effect. All jokes aside, I am a little worried -- I was so enraptured by the film, that I didn't even notice that it was a chick flick. Either my detector is on the fritz, or California is turning me into a big girl.

I had better go and kill the shit out of Kevin in Urban Terror just to be on the safe side.

-Andy.

I think I may die of shock

I just read that one of my favorite bands, Massive Attack, is going to be playing a live show (or 2) in the U.K. In and of itself, this is pretty surprising, as Massive Attack rarely plays live these days. When they released "100th Window", I was hoping to be able to see them live again (I saw them back in Chicago when they toured in support of "Mezzanine"). However, for some reason, Massive Attack didn't really tour the US in support of the new record.

But it doesn't stop here. Supposedly, one of the Massive Attack concerts is a benefit for the tsunami victims. And at said benefit, Massive Attack is going to be joined by none-other than Portishead! Truly, a band that I had written-off for dead -- but I really hope this signals Portishead making some sort of comeback.

There is a website for the concert itself -- the details don't appear to be set in stone yet, with the exception of the dates and cost. All three dates are in the U.K. (of course), but the website pledges a webcast. I can barely wait.

-Andy.

The Snowsuit Effort

The Snowsuit Effort is an excellent photo blog that I found via the Bloggies. Actually, the word "excellent" doesn't do this blog justice. Not only is the design sublime, but the photos are truly astounding. If I were one one-hundredth as good at photography as the photographer behind The Snowsuit Effort, I would be a happy camper.

-Andy.

"Trink Coke"

I took this photo at a brew pup, where the extended EDS team all went for dinner on Wednesday night. It was quite a large affair (at least 27 EDSers), and we all ran up quite a bill. Of course, because I don't drink (not even in Germany), I only had two cokes. So, I'm still a cheap date.

-Andy.

Just like "The Terminal"

The opening credits for "The Terminal" are done in the style of olde-timey analog information board. I didn't think that these were still used, but lo and behold, Frankfort airport has a gigantic one. And I must say, it is really neat when the letters change.

-Andy.

Obviously...

... while I was able to write that last post in Frankfurt, I wasn't able to get it posted until I got back home. I was having a weird problem with the Wifi in Frankfurt airport -- it was taking a super long time to establish TCP connections. But once they were up, data riding over the established socket was rather snappy. Anyways, I tried to hit "post" just as Luftansa started herding everyone at the waiting area onto several buses, so that we could be taken to the plane (which was out on the tarmac, not near the terminals). I waited as long as I possibly could, and when I saw the "error" dialog, I just went for the bus. Normally, I would have liked to do some network troubleshooting, but I really didn't want to miss my plane.

-Andy.

Auf weidersen

I'm sitting at Frankfurt International Airport, waiting for my Luftansa flight to London, where I will connect to another flight to San Francisco. On the whole, my trip to Germany was okay. I did a ridiculous amount of work, and when you factor in going out for 2+ hour dinners every night, I didn't really have a whole lot of personal time on this trip. But still, I am grateful to the EDS team in Germany for helping me out at every step along the way. I''m not really into this whole traveling thing, or even the training thing, but thankfully they made the task that I had to do over the course of the last 2 weeks a lot easier.

Anyways, the flight is boarding now, so I'll have to write more about my Germany experiences later.

-Andy.

The Machine Marches On

Great stuff on wired.com today: "Hide Your IPod, Here Comes Bill". I read this article with a high degree of amusement. As the Microsoft machine marches on, taking over market after market, it is nice to see them stymied, as evidenced by their own employees. Microsoft employees tend to be a smart lot -- so if they are buying iPods in droves, then it seems like management should try and figure out why, instead of simply banning the practice.

From what I've read about the "PlaysForSure" program, it seems like Microsoft has solved a lot of the reasons why non-iPod mp3 players have sucked on Windows. So eventually, with this software in place, the non-iPods may start to take over the market (just like wintel PCs before them). But for right now, Microsoft has got nuthin'.

But meanwhile, the machine continues to march. I had a quick look at Microsoft's new "MSN Search" the other day, and at first glance, it appears to be a total Google rip-off -- at least from a UI perspective. It looks like the search results that it is returning still aren't as complete as Google's. But how long will it be before Microsoft can out-Google Google?

sigh.

-Andy.

The T-Mobile Tango

I wanted to have good Internet access while traveling abroad, both to keep on top of work, but also to keep in touch with my friends and family (and TV). Based upon the information that I had from other EDS employees who had gone to Germany, T-Mobile WiFi HotSpots were plentiful, but expensive. In fact, it is 2 euros for every 15 minutes -- 8 euros an hour. Computing the exchange rate is left as an exercise to the reader -- but suffice it to say, this is quite expensive. I did some research, however, and found that accounts on the T-Mobile HotSpot system in the USA can be used on T-Mobile HotSpots in Europe. The advantage, of course, is that in America (being the gluttons that we are), you can buy an "all you can eat plan" for a flat monthly fee. So, before leaving for Germany, I added T-Mobile's HotSpot service to my cell phone plan.

My first week in Germany, I was staying at a hotel that didn't have T-Mobile. The Wifi in the hotel was served by Swisscom, and there was no roaming agreement between Swisscom and T-Mobile. So, I didn't really try to use the T-Mobile service in Europe until last Friday, when I was at Frankfurt airport, waiting to go to England. And of course, it didn't work.

Over the weekend in London, I tried it twice more (both times at Heathrow), and was not successful in getting my account to work. So, I returned to Germany, tired and frustrated by the fact that my T-Mobile HotSpot account wasn't working. My second week in Germany, I am staying at a different hotel which is served by T-Mobile. So, I spent an hour on Sunday evening on the phone with T-Mobile, trying to resolve the situation.

I think that T-Mobile is just like any multi-national company. From the outside, it looks like one homogenous entity. However, internally, due to regional laws and other political reasons, it is really many different sub-companies. The support website for the T-Mobile HotSpot in Germany listed two different phone numbers. In addition, the website advertises that the support personnel speaks German, English, and Turkish. When I called the first number, the person told me (in broken English) that the english-speaking support personnel are only in Monday through Friday.

So, at that point, I was skunked. But luckily, I picked up a T-Mobile brochure when I was in London. That had the support number for T-Mobile UK. I called them up, and the helpful scotsman who answered wasn't able to help me, but he was able to give me the phone number for T-Mobile HotSpot support in the USA. Once connect to T-Mobile USA, I found that my account was locked?

Why was it locked you might ask? Because I reported my cell phone lost, and asked that my account be on hold. When I did this, I assumed that they would lock the cell phone account, but leave the WiFi account. But no, that isn't how T-Mobile works. I have one account, and they have one giant lock, and that is how it goes. So, I had to establish a new, separate account that was WiFi-only, in order to get on the 'net. Sheesh.

The lesson: never lose your cell phone. It really sucks.

-Andy.

The National Theatre at night

I managed to get a pretty decent (for me anyway) picture of the National Theatre in London at night:

-Andy.