Sandro

What I'm really up to

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 02:28:29 GMT

(Please take the time to answer this. It's important to me.)

Imagine if all the websites you use and the apps on your phone stored the data they collect from you in a place where you could control it. In today's world, every time you buy something, every time you search for something, every move you make in a game, every comment you post, every "like" or "+1" button you press, every time you follow a link from one site to another, ... everything you do online today can be recorded and kept, somewhere beyond your reach. Imagine if, instead, it was stored by a service that you selected and which would do as you asked. If you wanted it deleted, or changed (but not to cheat someone), you could open the control panel and do it. If you wanted to download it, archive it, even upload it elsewhere, you could do that. And everything still worked fine.

You might worry this new service would now know too much. But it would be one of many, and you could move between them when you felt like it, and maintain multiple independent personna accounts. More importantly, because you would not be locked in, these providers would be competing to serve you better, with the best privacy policies and terms of service, at a price you like.

Please, for now, ignore the questions of how this might work, and how we'd get everyone to switch.

View Poll: owning your data

#ididnotreport

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 11:29:38 GMT

It's tempting to join the stream and post a (true and heartbreaking) ididnotreport (from the 70s), but I just use twitter for professional contacts, so that really doesn't seem like a good idea. I dunno. I'm not great at the whole "out" thing any more.

refi

Sat, 25 Feb 2012 14:10:50 GMT

Anyone have an recommendations or advice about refinancing? I've never done it before, and there are a few complications in this case.

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 10:36:42 GMT

I suppose lj is passe now.

ETA: and the UI is confusing. I thought I was posting this in a different place, one that had been unused since 2005.

Very cool new technology

Wed, 28 Dec 2011 20:18:59 GMT

View Poll: #1806619

Waltham Airport?

Sat, 12 Nov 2011 21:38:59 GMT

I was looking at a google map of my neighborhood and noticed "Waltham Airport", more or less on a neighbor's lawn. Several sources confirm this location for "WLM". Very very strange. I guess maybe there used to be an airstrip there, and when they built houses over it, it never got de-listed from various databases?

Smartphone without data service?

Sat, 01 Oct 2011 19:27:07 GMT

Does anyone know of a carrier that will let you use a smartphone without paying $30+/mo for data service?

(this is for my kids.... they don't need data service; I just want to pay the $9.99 per line, but I'd like them to be able to be android phones.)

Laser Disks?

Wed, 17 Aug 2011 02:41:47 GMT

Am I right in assuming that laser disks are entirely worthless now? I have about 40 movies. I suppose I could keep their 12" sleeves as art....

Ask LJ - Ethernet Wiring

Sun, 03 Jul 2011 15:04:52 GMT

The last time I wired a house for ethernet, 100Base-T was state-of-the-art.

The walls and ceiling in my new house are open now, so it's the time to wire it, but I don't know what kind of wires to use, and what constraints I have. It's hard to sort through the stuff I'm seeing on the Web. Anyone have a quick bottom line for me?

(If you say "just use wifi", I will smile and nod and ignore you. Wifi has it's place, but when it's not a problem, in my experience, wires are much better.)

Thanks!

bbq?

Sun, 29 May 2011 01:02:36 GMT

Should I hold a little bbq/party Monday afternoon, at my new house? It now has electricity, a working bathroom, and two chairs. And it's kinda nice.

(it does not however, have any sort of kitchen.)

Picking exterior colors

Wed, 18 May 2011 17:29:03 GMT

How should I pick colors for my new house?

It's currently painted in a fancy Victorian 6-color style, which is mostly pleasing, but incomplete in some places and peeling in others.

High-res pictures for anyone who wants to suggest a color scheme [possibly via photoshop :-) ] are here.

Buying a House (!!!)

Thu, 21 Apr 2011 23:33:14 GMT

My offer for 23 Lord Street, Waltham has been accepted. Assuming there are no great unpleasant surprises in the inspection or mortgage process, by June I should be a home owner again.

I'm a bit nervous about moving after five years renting the very comfortable house I'm in now, and about taking on a big old house in need of work, but the location and price and size and architecture ... well, it's the best option I've seen on the market in years.

Now, if I can just figure out what to do with that absurd koi pond in the front yard.

who wants to talk about

Fri, 12 Nov 2010 20:10:21 GMT

Is there an effective technique for finding out which of my friends, or even friends of friends, wants to chat about some particular topic I feel like talking about?

... without bothering everyone else.

favorite albums

Sat, 16 Oct 2010 01:53:16 GMT

I saw a facebook meme with all the usual rules, about coming up with 15 of your favorite albums in 15 minutes. In thinking about that, it seems to me there's a big gap between the albums I merely liked a lot and the albums I listened to a hundred bajillion times. And it seemed like there were about 20 of the latter, so I've listed 20.

Berkeley Years (childhood)

1962 Judy Collins: Golden Apples of the Sun (1977 for me)

1970 Joni Mitchel: Ladies of the Canyon (1977 for me)

1971 Jethro Tull: Aqualung (1978 for me)

1973 Pink Floyd: Dark Side of the Moon (1980 for me)

1977 Jethro Tull: Songs From the Wood (1978 for me)

Troy Years (college)

1984 Frankie Goes to Hollywood: Welcome to the Pleasuredome

1985 REM: Reconstruction of the/Fables/of the Reconstruction

1986 Peter Gabriel: So

1987 Sinead O'Connor: The Lion and the Cobra

1989 Bob Mould: Workbook

1989 Nine Inch Nails: Pretty Hate Machine

1990 Cordelia's Dad: Cordelia's Dad

Boston Years

1990 Bongwater: The Power of Pussy (1991 for me)

1991 Nirvana: Nevermind

1991 Pearl Jam: Ten

1991 Dead Can Dance: A Passage in Time

1992 Tori Amos: Little Earthquakes

1992 Alice in Chains: Dirt (1993 for me)

1994 Stabbing Westward: Ungod

1996 Apocalyptica: Plays Metallica by Four Cellos

Parenting Years

None :-)

Apocalyptica

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 05:18:47 GMT

I saw Apocalyptica tonight. I hung out with miss_chance and palmwiz; Gregorian was there, too, with friends of his. I love that he loves this band; I think he listened to their first album a lot in utero. (Hmmm, I wonder if he also listened to Nirvana's In Utero in utero. I don't recall. :-)

Mostly I just like their first album; I don't care for rock-metal drums along with cello very much, which seems to be their later sound. There was one song off their just-released album that I liked a lot, though (and it used a more subtle drum): (Sacra)

They have a few songs with vocals, and they had a vocalist on stage to sing them. I have no idea who he is; I don't think they introduced him or anything. Websearching I haven't had any luck, although I find reports of who they used as a singer in other gigs.

By my memory, it was my first (real?) concert since Gregorian started being too big to take. I have vague memories of us taking him at a few months to see Bad Religion at Avalon, but... ah, it turns out that show was 3 months before he was born. If my memory is that bad, maybe there are shows I'm completely forgetting. (I guess I was quite aware that we were bringing him to the concert. The fact that he was only a fetus is what I forgot.)

As for the co-headliner, Dir En Grey... Ummm. They are clearly very talented, enthusiastic, and ... pretty, but I wish they'd play something else. :-) [Maybe it's an acquired taste; this was the first I'd heard them.]

One funny thing --- lots and lots of people using their cameras to take pictures and videos (this wasn't so common back in 1996!) -- and I saw lots of android phones and only one iphone. Maybe this is because, like the band, Linus is from Finland? (As are the creators of IRC, MySQL, and ssh, I see.)

too cool video

Fri, 20 Aug 2010 16:34:53 GMT

I can't believe how much I love this video.

It's a "literal" video (I love them), really well done, with the Eclipse trailer.

I recommend positioning the video window slightly off the bottom of your screen to block the lyrics, which are mostly distracting. At least on the second or third watching.

Tobuscus: Twilight Eclipse LITERAL Trailer Parody .

The Afterlife one is quite nice too, but not quite as epic.

lessons learned about exercise & diet

Sat, 24 Jul 2010 23:30:10 GMT

While getting hungry sometimes makes me irritable and even miserable, at other times it's just a physical sensation, with no negative mental impact. Now I just need to figure out how to keep it in the second camp more.

Lots of exercise, and hard exercise, are fine. They don't make me sick; they're not unhealthy. (previous theories have been discarded due to contrary evidence.)

Carefully fitted running shoes from the place near Harvard square may be good for running (unclear yet), but they are bad for walking. They are too tilted, and hurt my ankles after a while.

I have zero interest in fancy, special, or interesting food. Perfectly ordinary food can be just as pleasurable (to my philistine palate), if not better. [[ETA: Or maybe this is just wishful thinking. Hard to tell.]]

Exercise alone is not enough to make me lose much weight, at least not in reasonable quantities (~1hr/day) (This fits with that interesting study recently showing that fat kids are less active because they are fat, not fat because they are less active.)

Using albuterol before exercising is probably good. Even if it's not needed on the asthma front [my doctor says it helps even if I can't feel it], it may help me stay motivated, being a stimulant.

Somewhat less specific: it's good to find stuff that makes you feel good. :-)

It's much easier to take care of myself physically, including eating right, when I'm calm/happy and don't have the kids around. (those are two separate factors, and are probably not positively correlated; my point is that when they happen to coincide, food/body stuff is easier to deal with.)

More on Hair, Odd Coincidence

Fri, 09 Jul 2010 03:55:23 GMT

In a bizarre postscript to yesterday's question about hair styles (as I contemplate cutting my long hair), and my happening across the nicely written if historically inaccurate Louis CK Poker ("faggot") scene earlier today (and on Fresh Air yesterday), I got rudely called "long haired faggot" for the first time in my life today.

I've held hands with and even kissed boyfriends in very public mainstream places before, but never had someone do something like that. So it was odd.

It was a trio of teenagers who had been awkwardly, coincidentally following me walking across Belmont at nightfall, for about 20 minutes. I bet they felt weird at me (unhappily) hearing all their conversation, taking the same turns they were about to, and walking too fast for them to pass. Perhaps they were surprised when they figured out I was a guy, although in all their loud conversation they didn't seem to notice me. When our paths finally diverged, and we got some real distance between us, one of them called that out.

I almost ran after them to confront them on it, but I didn't. Nor, alas, did I think of a clever retort.

Seriously, if I go ahead and cut my hair now, I hope you'll all accept it was despite this little incident, and hardly because of it. :-)

(And next time, someone ends up following me for more than a block, I think I'll stop and stretch for a while, or something. Crazy.)

hair styles?

Thu, 08 Jul 2010 04:51:50 GMT

How do you decide what your hair should be like?

(Seeing myself in videos recently has made me seriously dislike my current hairstyle, but I don't know what to do instead.)

RIF is a REC

Tue, 22 Jun 2010 16:14:42 GMT

It's been a long, long time coming, but finally RIF is a W3C Recommendation.

It's explained pretty well by this MIT News article, including another video of me. (This is my month to be a TV star, now that TV is dead.)

Video! Me Talking!

Thu, 10 Jun 2010 05:13:18 GMT

I gave a talk last night, and now it's on the web! Given I was only able to spend a few days preparing, I'm quite proud of it.

http://vimeo.com/12444260

Fri, 21 May 2010 15:18:58 GMT

I got a new gas dryer, and after two weeks, trying various settings, it always leaves the contents slightly damp unless I run them a second time. (or I can used a timed setting, instead of an automatic setting, but that's ridiculous.)

The manual says just run them again, or run smaller loads, or run loads that have more similar materials. I don't think (based on previous dryers I've had) that I'm incorrectly loading this one. I don't really want to have to deal with the dryer twice for every load, ya know?

wtf?

the Semantic Web

Mon, 10 May 2010 15:43:33 GMT

A nice little video about the Semantic Web. I'm not in it, but I work with many of the folks who are. I also wouldn't frame it like this, but this isn't a bad framing.

http://kateray.net/film/

hanko de mayo

Sat, 08 May 2010 16:12:39 GMT

I was behind on my vlogbrothers until I got pointed at this, this morning.

maybe it's just me, but omfg this is amazing (and I don't even care about the eco angle at all, frankly)....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyJb2nzAZIk