OSCON 2011

There is some irony that the two years I take a hiatus from OSCON are the two years it’s in my backyard. When I try to start speaking again, they’re back in Portland.

I’m going to be at OSCON this week giving two talks:

– [Living without Your Linemen: The Programmer Becomes System Operator in the Cloud](http://www.oscon.com/oscon2011/public/schedule/detail/18893). It’s about why you should get your shit together and pay attention to all this cloud hooplah
– [Tales of Virality](http://www.oscon.com/oscon2011/public/schedule/detail/18892). It should be a fun little talk about viral marketing (from an engineering perspective).

I’ve given these before, but one of them was a keynote (so had a different style), and other was at a private event. Unfortunately (for me) they didn’t put these talks in the PHP track as I asked. One was put in the Operations track and the other was put in the Business track. Quel dĂ©sastre! I’ll try to make it worth your time, if you plan on attending. So please come see them!

If not, say hi anyway, I don’t bite, and I can hold of my alcohol down (mostly). I usually sober up before 5pm (when I’m giving these talks). 🙂

MacPorts vs. HomeBrew

A friend asks whether they should use MacPorts or Homebrew.

What they are, are ways of installing Unix (Linux or BSD) software on your Macintosh in a way that they get updated. This is useful if you need to customize your (L)AMP stack, or process a document in LaTeX, or do graphing visualization or -code optimization… there are a lot of uses and having a consistent Linux-like or BSD-like tree of libraries and applications is usually the best option.

I use MacPorts and I’ve used Fink in the past. I never tried Homebrew.

Continue reading more ignorant comparisons between Fink, MacPorts and Homebrew after the jump

How Apple rolls (for newbies)

I read this old comment about recently-released Mac OS X Lion:

…but really it’s the lack of Rosetta that has me most annoyed. I admin 120 users who still use Office 2004 on G5s. This just pushed up the cost of upgrading them by $200 each.

Actually, no. The cost of that particular upgrade is zero because you can’t. Apple dropped operating support on the G5 in Snow Leopard. So you can’t even install Lion on this computer, you must leave the computer on Leopard. He would have an issue if he has Intel-based Macintoshes that are still using Office 2004 (or earlier-Office 2008 introduced in 2008) or Adobe Creative Suite 2 (or earlier—Adobe CS3 introduced in 2007). But he should leave those people with Snow Leopard, just as he left the G5’ers a few years back with Leopard.

This is just another indicator of how Apple rolls when they want to introduce something new:

Apple and the Motorola 68000 processor:

  1. 1984 68k Macs introduced with 68k processor
  2. 1994 first PowerPC Macintosh introduced with “System 7” (specifically 7.1). Applications fork into three categories: 68k applications, PowerPC-only, or “Fat binaries” (which run on but 68k and PowerPC Macs). PowerPC Macs can run 68k-only applications via emulation.
  3. 1998 MacOS 8.5 drops support of 68k computers.
  4. 2006 Intel-computers cannot run 68k applications.
  5. 2007 Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) drops Classic-mode, and with it, all support for 68k applications.

Continue reading about Apple and backward compatibility after the jump (or just to watch their Infomercial)

Credit Reporting

Just spent an hour trying to get [a fraudulent site (creditreport.com, freecreditreport.com, consumerinfo.com, and thousands of others)](http://www.la.bbb.org/business-reviews/Credit-Reporting-Agencies/FreeCreditReportcom-in-Irvine-CA-13062929 “BBB rating of FreeCreditReport.com”) to stop charging my credit card. They have been billing me since September of last year and despite disputing the charges before, they keep doing a recurring charge. They wanted the following in order for me to “cancel” my account:

– my name
– the credit card number charged
– my birth date
– the last four digits of my social security number
– e-mail address
– my full name
– my mother’s maiden name

Notice how all of this information is just what they need to do a complete identity theft?Continue reading about dealing with credit reports after the jump.

Carrying a camera

It’s been a while, but now that I’m almost moved in to the new place, I think it’s high time I start photographing again. Mostly this means carrying around the camera, even if I haven’t gotten used to pressing the shutter button again.

Recently, “the camera” means my trusty Leica and [the original lens I purchased with it](http://terrychay.com/article/cosina-voigtlander-lenses.shtml “The crack cocaine of the Leica World. I have five M-mount lenses, but this is still my favorite. Maybe because I’m used to the focal length; maybe it’s because it is silver.”).

Marie at the Food Court

Marie at the Mall
Stonestown Mall, San Francisco, California

Leica M8, Cosina-Voigtländer NOKTON 35mm F1.2 Aspherical
1/60sec, iso 160, 35mm (47mm)

Continue reading about shooting a digital Leica after the jump.

Love letter to my Representative

07141104.PDF

The Honorable Nancy Pelosi
235 Cannon HOB
Washington, D.C. 20515

Dear Representative Pelosi,

I [read this in a political blog today](http://www.balloon-juice.com/2011/07/14/whos-the-man-3/ “Who’s the Man?—Balloon Juice”):

> Congressional Democrats took aim Thursday at conservative Republicans who oppose raising the federal debt ceiling, with Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) charging that a top GOP negotiator, Rep. Eric Cantor (Va.), “shouldn’t even be at the table” in crucial White House talks on the issue.

The blogger opined:

> Can you imagine Steny Hoyer even thinking about pulling this shit on Nancy Smash? If he did it in a dream, he’d wake up and apologize.

I had to let out a chuckle. (Nancy Smash is **you.** It’s a nickname based on [a photo of you holding a gavel when you bright the ACA bill to the Capitol](http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389×7972612 “Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi carries the gavel when Medicare passed-pics—Democratic Underground”).)

I’m young, healthy, and with a great paying job, but I have friends who have already been impacted (positively) by “Obamacare” so I’m so proud of what you and the others in Congress have achieved with [ACA](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patient_Protection_and_Affordable_Care_Act “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act—Wikipedia”). It is a landmark legislation and accomplishment when you were Speaker. In a generation, your opponents on the other side of the aisle will campaign on **preserving** it.

Politically, I’m pretty conservative—which means I’m probably to the left of most of your colleagues in the Democratic Party. But I can’t tell you how happy I was when I realized I’d be voting for you in 2008 — that you were my representative. And again in 2010, though under less enjoyable circumstances.

I [work in technology](http://automattic.com/about/ “About Us—Automattic”) building [free software](http://wordpress.com/ “WordPress”) that [powers 12% of sites on the internet](http://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/content_management/all “Usage of CMS for websites—Web Technology Surveys”) and therefore I do everything electronically, but I’ve been told that if I write a letter to you (moreso if it is handwritten), that you might actually read it. I don’t want to request anything except to say, keep fighting the good fight…

and **SMASH!** 🙂

Terry Chay
A citizen of your District since 2008