Took the kids up to Santa Barbara for a couple days. Left a little too late Friday afternoon and got caught in traffic going through Los Angeles (not fun).
Spent a few hours at the Santa Barbara Zoo on Saturday. The Zoo is just off the main beach area (you could walk there from the beach), is somewhat small, but very well kept. A fair portion of the zoo was “under construction” at this time. Well worth the time. One thing of note – there are a number of picnic areas in the zoo, including one overlooking the ocean.
Went up the coast a bit to a “dude” ranch and took the kids horseback riding. My 7-year-old daughter has had riding lessons and was quite sure of herself. Rode up into the hills (typical California coastal scrub). Had a nice view of the Channel Islands. The 1.5 hour trip was just about the right length, as by the time you get back, there are tired muscles in unfamiliar places.
Spent the last part of the afternoon in a rather interesting park (good place to lose your kids, for a little while). Headed back home just after sunset.
Got very quiet in the car on the back, with all three kids asleep for a time.
Started buying music again.
I had pretty much stopped buying music at one point. All the old groups I was familiar with were gone, KROQ was stuck in an 80’s flashback, and I wasn’t hearing anything interesting.
When MP3s started floating around the Internet I heard some interesting new music, and went out and bought the CDs (I own all the music I keep). Added quite a lot to my collection for a while.
Now the RIAA is … well, a pain in the ass. Have not bought any music in a while, as I’d stopped downloading MP3s and was not hearing any interesting new music. Moreover at this point I’m so annoyed with the RIAA and their tactics, I don’t want to buy anything from an RIAA member.
Magnatune works for me. I usually end up listening to the entire set of music, sometimes more than once, before deciding if I actually like an artist’s work. The choices at Magnatune are a bit limited, but have found some bits I like.
How can you get Internet-based universal calendars/scheduling as good as the Microsoft Exchange/Outlook combination or better?
I have been puzzling at this question for a while. Let’s start with the basics:
- Most of the application logic (and extensions) should be on the server.
- Clients should require no or minimal additional installation.
- Offline operation should be supported (for when your notebook is off the network).
- Use existing standards where possible (iCalendar, vCard).
- Try to interoperate with other solutions (Exchange/Outlook) as best you can.
If you support disconnected operation, then you need automatic download and caching of calendar items. This looks a whole lot like the semantics of private and shared IMAP folders. Why re-invent the wheel? Heck, you are going to check your email. Might as well synchronize your calendar data at the same time over the same connection.
Using IMAP with the Mozilla email reader, you can mark folders for off-line use. Mozilla will download and keep a local copy of all messages when you go off-line. Outlook might have similar function.
IMAP is a better solution than POP – especially if any user has more than one computer (say a desktop at work, a notebook, and a desktop at home).
Teach the Mozilla Calendar plug-in to recognize messages containing iCalendar data. Teach the server to translate (say) Exchange-style meeting announcments into iCalendar format (say when setting up a meeting with someone at a company using Exchange). Outlook can (apparently) be taught to look for your free/busy information on the Internet – especially if you send the right contact information in a vCard.
It is pretty easy to put together an Exchange/Outlook ghetto that works well. It is pretty easy to put together a my-group-only solution using open-source or commercial software. The trick is to put together a solution that can interoperate between organizations, when you have no control over what the other organizations use.
I just don’t see that the furor over Gmail scanning email to place ads as justified.
Ars Technica: Google’s Gmail under threat in California
First, Google is offering us something of value (free email, huge storage) in return for the service. If you don’t want your email scanned, then don’t use Gmail.
Second, Google has a track record of – well – trying to be a good citizen. With a bit of care Google can make sure that the auto-placed ads don’t automatically return too much information to marketers.
Third, who said email was private? As long as the FBI’s “Carnivore” program exists, you should assume that all your email is scanned.
Posted in Politics, Web
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Took another look at rewriting the ActiveCVS code to incorporate the last bit of inspiration. As it turns out when the SCC API is called about all you can count on is the (absolute) filename passed. This means you basically ignore the initialize and open-project calls. Instead you base your implementation on a map of filenames, and associate with each filename the SCC context.