{ dubovsky.com rantings }

I’ve had my Android Dev Phone 1 (T-Mobile G1) for a year now, and figured I should update my previous post about what applications I recommend:

• Google Listen: it isn’t the perfect podcast listener, but, as with most Google products, the difference between it and perfect is small enough to tolerate.
• Astrid Task/Todo List: a great to-do list with a nice, simple widget. I’ve recently starting using its synchronization with Remember the Milk and it works well. My list is in the cloud and available to me from anywhere.
• ConnectBot: still the best ssh client I’ve found.
• RealCalc Scientific Calculator: I know, there’s one installed, but it doesn’t do RPN or binary/hexadecimal; this one does.
• RingDroid: my favorite application for getting audio files (or parts of them) to ringtones.
• Google Voice: now everyone can afford the power of a software PBX.
• My Tracks: fun for mapping favorite bike routes and sharing them via Google Maps
• Google Sky Map: simple, amazing, and tons of fun for people who are new to the power of a smartphone
• Voice Recorder or Droid Record: turns your phone into a basic audio recorder. Handy for meetings, notes in the car, etc. Both work very well, just with different interfaces.
• Google Goggles: I used to recommend Barcode Scanner (which is still handy), but this is a bit more sophisticated; awfully handy when shopping and making notes. Take a picture of a price tag (barcode), object, building, text in a foreign language, etc., and Google will work its magic.
• Contact Owner, by Paranoid Android: changes your lock / wake-up screen to include a little message on how to contact you (in case you lose your phone).
• Astro File Manager: a decent file manager (think Dolphin / Nautilus / Explorer) that also has a process manager.
• Pintail: if you ever lose your phone, you can send a specially-formatted SMS (with a PIN) to it and it will respond with its GPS location
• BeamReader PDF Viewer: It’s the only PDF viewer I’ve found that can reliably (and quickly) handle very large PDFs, like data sheets for electronic parts. There’s a free version with limited capabilities and then a “key” version you can purchase which will unlock the remaining features. The only pay-for application I have installed at the moment.
• KeePassDroid: a password manager based on the open-source KeePass. Does what it says.
• Google Buzz widget: if you use Buzz, it does what you expect it to do.
• Android Terminal Emulator: rarely used, but fun for poking around or the occasional hack.
• Compass: again, does what you’d expect. Works with GPS off, which is nice for battery savings.

And the games / silly applications:

• Jewels: a Bejeweled clone.
• Magic 8-Ball: “the outlook is amusing.”
• Coin Flip: I almost never carry change; this helps settle who drives to lunch.
• Ethereal Dialpad: a neat little “touch to make music” app, good for demonstrating the interface to others. I wish it supported multi-touch.
• Tricorder: silly fun watching the raw accelerometer data, etc.
• Barrage Lite: a Scorched Earth clone.

I ordered three hard drives from Amazon, Western Digital Caviar Green 1.5TB models (WD15EADS). They were inexpensive and I talked to people who used them in their desktop setups. It turns out that Western Digital, at some point, changed the drives they were making so that they no longer work under a RAID setup. The drives routinely fault out of the array because you can’t turn on TLER. Also, they make a horrible loud clicking noise every ten seconds as the heads are parked and un-parked due to routine disk access under Linux. Nowhere on Western Digital’s page about the drive does it say “do not use in a RAID setup” or “do not use in Linux.” Oops.

From scouring the web, it turns out that the “sub”-model number and build date are important. My three drives were WD15EADS-00P8B0, built Nov 2009, firmware 01.00A01. There are reports that older build-date drives can be made to work; true or not, mine could not. Western Digital’s customer service is of zero help, blaming the problem on everything but the drive.

No more Western Digital drives for me. I’m returning these three as defective. I’ve put WD drives in my last three builds because they’re inexpensive and reliable. No longer. Back to Seagate drives (yes, even after their ST31500341AS firmware debacle).

Diann and I spent a lovely Memorial Day weekend up in Kinsale, VA. Paul referred to the event as “Medium-Sized Dog Fest”:

To folks who are wondering if I’ve dropped off the face of the earth, a quick note:

Sorry for the lack of interesting updates, but a few things have gone down in the past couple months that have kept me from keeping in touch. My company is closing down our office and moving the product elsewhere, so we’ve all been doing two jobs (our normal schedule work and trying to get everything transitioned to the new development team). Add in little things like doctor’s visits, a water heater cracking open, and some travel for work, and you have one busy and tired me.

It looks like things aren’t going to calm down here until Thanksgiving week, so until then: be well, do good work, and keep in touch.

(Click through the last image to see it in a bigger size, in which I think it looks considerably better.)

This project would have fizzled at several points had Diann not been there to teach and encourage. (I can be stubborn on rare occasions.) The interior is recycled graph paper and the exterior is wallpaper from an old sample book. It was great fun and will be used as my next work notebook; one wonderful feature of this type of binding (and why Diann suggested it, despite 30-odd tiny knots) is that it lays flat when opened. Highly recommended if you have someone to teach you the stitch!

I made a freezer paper stencil shirt!

The instructions elsewhere are as clear as anything I’d write, but what I learned today:

• For multiple color prints, don’t paint the under layers where the top layers will go; you build up too much ink if you have layer on top of layer. A bit of overlap to make registration easier would probably be fine.
• Iron a piece of freezer paper on the inside of the shirt before ironing any pattern on the outside; it will keep the outside fabric surface from wrinkling from the paint, stretching, etc.
• If you’ve a short or long torso, adjust the height of the stencil appropriately. (Duh, but see image below.)
• Shun the frumious bandersnatch!

Design copied (with permission) from Quadro’s fabric work:

When Diann and I were in Williamsburg in 2006 we purchased some delicious cherry cognac sauce which was somewhere between preserves and pie filling. It was fabulous on ice cream and, continuing yesterday’s cherry theme, I decided to try making something like it.

• 4 c. sweet cherries
• 3 Tbsp. lemon juice
• 2 tsp. almond extract
• ¾ c. sugar
• ½ c. black currant vodka
• 4 Tbsp. cornstarch dissolved in 2 Tbsp. water
• ¼ c. brandy

Cook the cherries, lemon juice, almond extract, sugar, and vodka in a saucepan for 20 minutes. While stirring, add the cornstarch mixture. Cook until thickened. Remove from heat and let stand 10 minutes. Thoroughly blend in the brandy. Spoon into jars and cool. Store in the refrigerator; serve over vanilla ice cream.

I may have used too much brandy above, but it tastes good so far. We’ll see how it turns out after it sits for a day or so.

From the Blacksburg Farmer’s Market, buy:

• one Weathertop Farms pastured chicken
• five cups of sweet cherries
• one loaf of sesame and wheat bread
• one head of leaf lettuce

Spatchcock/butterfly the chicken, brine it with garlic, sugar, pepper, and rosemary. Chuck it in the refrigerator for the afternoon.

Clean and pit the cherries. Add a little lemon juice, cornstarch solution, almond extract, and butter. Cheat and buy a couple pie crusts from the store (I hate making pastry dough). Pour in the cherries and cover with the second crust, cutting a few slits in the top. Throw it in the oven for about an hour.

Fire up the grill and drain the chicken. Baste it with an olive oil and rosemary mix and throw it on the grill (the half that isn’t on), breast side down and legs toward the hot center (dark meat needs to cook more). Close the lid. Flip and re-baste it every 15 minutes until done. Remove from grill and let stand 10 minutes before carving. Eat with a fresh green salad and tasty bread (not pictured, because by the time they were ready, we were too hungry for pictures).

The pie should be cooled enough to cut by the time you’re done with dinner.

Today, on this father’s day, my creative work is dedicated to my father; he taught me that doing is fun, and that I can learn to do anything.

Diann and I spent the time between breakfast and shower making potato stamps. I’ve cut a few linoleum and eraser block stamps for her over the last year or two, but hadn’t used potatoes since I was in high school art class. There’s something satisfying working with a stamp base that costs pennies, has limited resolution, and won’t last the week.

My friend Paul is raising money for his local Muscular Dystrophy Association and would greatly appreciate any donations that you could send his way.

My output from history|awk '{a[$2]++ } END{for(i in a){print a[i] " " i}}'|sort -rn.

58 dir
49 cd
44 svn
40 ssh
25 cat
21 sudo
21 make
18 telnet
18 svnmerge
18 rgrep
18 man
18 cvs
17 svndiff
14 scp
9 grep
8 route
7 kate
7 ifdata
6 kdesu
6 echo
5 ping
5 less

I’m ashamed that sudo is so far up there, but I just upgraded this box to Hardy and it took a bit of package juggling (proprietary video, VMware, etc.).

Jennifer Farris (our fabulous wedding photographer) posted a single photograph from our wedding, as a teaser. I’m very excited to see how the work turned out.

Also, a few of the photographs from my camera are over in the gallery — more to come.

And, finally, Diann points us to a few images from Sally’s camera.

Update: Jennifer just posted some new images.

Photo by Warren Gross (thanks!)

I finally took the time to grab the pictures…

…plus…

Hooray!

“It has become almost a cliché to remark that nobody boasts of ignorance of literature, but it is socially acceptable to boast ignorance of science.” — Richard Dawkins

It’s even worse with mathematics. At a dinner party, it appears to be okay to say “oh, I can’t do math,” but imagine the reactions you’d get if you said, “oh, I’m illiterate.”

I haven’t posted news in quite a while, so here goes:

I’ve been helping Diann with house projects, baking, playing nine ball (lost the LTC by one game), fixing poorly-made home appliances, hiking (Diann’s first time to the waterfall!), seeing the sights, baking some more, harassing the dog, re-working some plumbing I didn’t get right the first time, chilling on the couch, renovating the small bathroom (still not complete), and celebrating Evan’s big two.

Hey, I’m only about six months late with this. I didn’t forget, though!

Seven things to do before I die:

• be better than I am
• visit Florence
• have a vacation home; use it a lot
• build the perfect desk
• stay black and/or stick it to the man
• make the world a better place

Seven things I can’t do:

• touch my tongue to my nose
• remember my To-Do list
• sit still for long
• pass up fun
• abide
• come up with seven things for each of these

Seven things that attract me to my husband/wife/significant other:

• her untiring dedication to self-improvement
• her beauty
• her generosity
• her stubbornness
• her enchilladas
• her creativity

Seven things I most often say:

• “Pants.”
• “Dumpt dumpt.” (think: Law and Order)
• “Cake!”
• “In a perfect world…”
• “It works better if you plug it in.”
• “That’s not going to be good for business.”

Seven books (or series) I love:

• Dictionary of the Khazars (Milorad Pavic)
• The Everyday Work of Art (Eric Booth)
• Harry Potter (J.K. Rowling)
• Calvin and Hobbes (Bill Watterson)
• Ed Emberly’s Big Green Drawing Book
• Wikipedia

Seven movies I would watch over and over again:

• Amelie
• Dr. Strangelove
• La fille sur da pont (Girl On the Bridge)
• Toy Story
• Seven Years In Tibet
• Cannibal Stewardess Vixens Unchained

Seven people I want to join this meme, too:

• Diann (*nyah!*)
• Stephen
• Diana
• Eric
• Yanna Yana
• umm… Santa?

Outdoor dining weather is in full force here.