An Environmental Impact Report

Here is my new laptop’s report so far on its usage of electricity and how much power it thinks it saves by utilizing the Toshiba “eco” power plan. Blue is usage, and green is the amount of power it thinks it has conserved. Since at full power the laptop draws about 15W (vs the lightbulb in a fixture at 60W), I am not much too concerned about the amount of power that my computer is drawing. The system runs pretty cool, uses little power, but still manages to handle all of the tasks I throw at it, although, I haven’t tried running PhotoShop yet.

Privacy

Privacy seems to be something that a lot of individuals are worried about, but organizations seem to have no care for their constituents to have it. Facebook and Google lure users into their services with promises of secure communication and access to some special attribute that only that service can offer. With Buzz, Google violated the trust that users had placed in them, but of course, this was not the first time. Google has always had somewhat shady policies regarding information storage and use. With Google, there is an expectation of privacy on the part of the user, but an expectation of complete ownership of all information that passes through its network on the part of Google themselves. These are perhaps conflicting expectations. Facebook on the other hand, is just badly designed. There is now an open-door policy on a service that was once a protected place for university students to communicate with each other and for friends who went to different schools to stay in contact with each other. Now, there is a creepy factor since things have been opened up to allow any strange person in the world to sign up. It is a bit concerning, especially for anyone who may have had an account when the service was safe, and has since abandoned it. At this point Facebook is just careless, allowing any and all types of applications access to their API and making simple mistakes that cause email notifications to be mis-delivered, which is a severe breach of privacy. Twitter, on the other hand, is a gaping privacy hole, but that’s perfectly fine, since Twitter users have absolutely no expectation of privacy.

I personally do not have much worry about privacy, because in general I don’t really have anything to hide, but I do not like the idea of my information being released without my consent. I do not want to be added to services that I have not signed up for, and I especially do not want things that I write or create to become the property of Google, it just isn’t right.

Reconsidering Blog Diversification

At some point in the past I had a lot of things going on in my life to the point where I required several different blogs just to keep things sorted out. I had interests pretty much flying out my ass and needed a place to blog and insert content relevant to each and every one. Now, things are different. My interests are narrowing and things are becoming more stable and cohesive, so the need for a separate blog relating to each thing is becoming less required. Unfortunately even my more specialized (and somewhat secret) blogs are not doing their jobs anymore either, mostly because they do not represent the real me anymore. I still have kinky interests, but they seem to have no meaning or substance without affection and some type of strong emotional bond, so those areas almost come back under the scope of this blog. Originally when this blog was launched it was to be my one-stop place for all of my thoughts, no matter how pure of problematic. Several years ago I had a problem where I considered suicide a few times, the entry where I announced those feelings and tried to write about them so that I could address them was posted to this blog, but now, it might be more likely to go to another blog, Restricted Access (as the name implies, its locked down). A few days ago, my new exercise routine stirred up erotic feelings in me and I felt like I needed an outlet, but it wasn’t right for my fetish blog, and it seemed a little out of the range of the body blog (since it’s a mental issue), so ideally it would be a personal topic, for the personal blog (this one), but once again, that type of thing ended up on RA, out of public view. The thoughts were personal, but not necessarily enough to be completely private. The separation of the body blog from the personal blog is really a self image thing I think. I keep the two worlds separate because I am afraid of screwing up, and then it would be an issue where it would be reflected in this blog and not just some other auxiliary blog that I can either close, or just ignore and forget about. Now I am realizing that the body blog is an ongoing thing and I do not necessarily screw up when I deviate from my goals, it just indicates a change in direction, just like anything else. The art blog has not been updated in over a year, which is probably a bad thing, since my art is a big part of my life. I don’t share much on there because it hardly seems relevant, because I feel like I am always doing the same stuff. It used to be the clay blog, which was great when I was still actively participating in ceramic classes and needed a way to keep my clay thoughts separate from my personal thoughts. Once again, I do not see why the differentiation was needed, except as a content delivery mechanism for the ceramic website (which is pretty much dead now). One other thing that affects the more “uncensored” blogs is the general audience nature of this blog. I really don’t want to make anyone uncomfortable, and I feel like if I started posting in that way, I just might alienate people. Perhaps that defense is more about a disparity in self image more than alienation, but I just can’t be sure. I am not yet comfortable with bridging that separation.

No matter how weird my life is, I am only one person, and there is becoming less and less reason to have everything separate. I want to be whole and outside of authentication mechanisms I’m not really sure how to go about it. I think I will experiment with web presence stuff other than the blogs at first and see if it is even a doable thing for all parts of me to coexist.

 

 

    

My Ideal Camera Bag

I am still looking for the perfect camera bag, but I think I have accepted that it simply does not exist. Below is a diagram of what I really would love to have, even though I can’t seem to find it.

A – Laptop compartment (15.4″ capacity)

B – SLR Holster, about 9″ long, SLR+Long Zoom

C – Accessory pocket

D – “Sliplock” or something similar (nylon web straps with plastic buckles will work)

E – Shoulder straps, I want a backpack form factor.

More GITI Problems

If you are sick of hearing about me talk about GITI and her problems, upgrades, etc, feel free to skip this entry (unless you are Chris, in which case, boyfriend, your help is required).

I am having problems with GITI, but not on the level of things technologically working or not working, it’s more a matter of things not being philosophically right with it. It is one thing to record academic assignments in a fairly plan way, that’s all there is to it, you enter an assignment, do the assignment, then enter a grade for it. No big deal, no crisis, everything is self contained. Now, this philosophy does not hold for components of the Health module. Logging meal records and workout records that way is good for record keeping sake, but it is lacking for usefulness in life improvement. The masturbation log is probably ok as is, not much to it beyond a journal entry. My primary concern with these things is that GITI is not being as useful as it could be. A select box of exercises is fine for the most part, but it is lacking in depth. I find myself wishing I could have GITI describe the workout to me, or better yet, give me a description with a picture. This of course would require me being able to supply the information to GITI, but that shouldn’t be a problem. As it is now, I have no ability to add such information, mostly because of the limited nature of fields, but how much do we want to expand fields. Is there a use in other modules for that particular functionality? I think there could be. Category icons could be useful, and would certainly be something that might be welcome in GITI v3. As for the meal log, it is difficult to access and utilize. There is no clear way to retrieve data from it, other than entering a date by hand and that is not very user friendly. I know that GITI doesn’t have access to a huge nutritional database, but it would be nice if something simple could be added, but looking at the module, I do not know where such a function would be placed. I find myself looking at other modules and thinking that their functions are so simple, most have the functions of insert, update, view, and when we are lucky, delete. They do not tend to contain more than one major type of data, which in my opinion makes them less useful than they could be (with the exception of Education, that monster is self contained and everything makes sense in data structure land, just not in the UI).

A few days ago when preparing a user account and also when packing up GITI for a theoretical off-site implementation, I realized how little GITI actually does. Without user data GITI is a cold, barren place. It doesn’t even look like itself without user data. Perhaps having more information available in GITI would be useful. Obviously information that would have to be licensed would be out of the question, but yet, simple things that are fairly common knowledge (or can be easily obtained from Wikipedia) may be useful. Why should a user have to leave the site to figure out what a particular exercise is? At the moment there is no construct in GITI to allow for The Interface itself to have such information, all information is owned by the end users, and areas where System could own data for such purposes are not elaborate enough to handle the ideas I have. I suppose GITI Doc could handle a great deal of it, but it is still limited and is not secured for any type of inter-user sharing or anything like that, hence, System Docs would not be safe from end-user edits, which makes me uneasy.

Any time I think I have finished in some major way with GITI my life changes in such a way as I have to either add a module, or bring back to life a module from my past which had long since been forgotten (I know it’s been a long time when it still tries to access the common data commands, oh how GITI v1 can we get). I am not looking to overhaul GITI, I just need to figure out how to add a little more information and make GITI a little more useful.

Char[140] Message

Why 140 characters? Why not 150, or 130? I have recently begun experimentally using Twitter. I still hold my previous opinions of it as being a gross social devolution, but I do find it to be somewhat amusing and even interesting in other contexts. I presently have my GITI statuses post to Twitter just for the purpose of because I can, I can get GITI to do it and it doesn’t force any extra effort on me. I still do not believe that Twitter is a useful service by itself, but with the addition of various readers and other tools that can integrate it into other things, it becomes the quite essential personal QOTD utility. I suppose in some ways, short messages are essential in technology, but not in human communication, that’s why we have e-mail, IM and a variety of other things that allow us to communicate without being stuck into a 140 character bubble. Sometimes writing for Twitter feels more like a game invented by an English professor, forcing the efficient use of the language. Can every thought someone would want to express be done in 140 characters? I don’t know, but it sounds like a great experiment for a PSYC major.

Procedures and Precedence

It seems like too often I have to question GITI in some way. Sometimes it is in the form of the amount of time I have to spend directly modifying the database, other times it is in the lack of a coherent user experience. The most recent situation of this was this morning when several times while working out I had to go into the database to add new entries for exercises that were not yet in the ‘fields’ table. If I were a normal end user I would be basically screwed in that situation since there isn’t an “other” and the health_exercise module uses only “system” fields, it does not allow for the end user to extend what is available. Why not? I do not know, it just was never considered, I guess as a result of me reacting to other modules that use user-level fields that are really inconvenient. I have found that in general the system level fields are more useful and tend to be less user intrusive, since it forces an administrative decision on what the fields should contain, but in the end it comes out show GITI to be a little inflexible in some areas. In almost no area of GITI do I use any type of coherent shared fields… a set of base values specified by an administrator and then a set of additional user values that can apply to the same field. Also, it is an ideal of GITI for each module to control its own fields when they are needed, this hasn’t gone so well in implementation as I have yet to write a single bit of code to allow a user to add an assignment type to the assignment addition area write in the education module, or about 1000 other annoying little spots where such functionality would be really cool. Now I find myself with a decision to make. GITI needs consistent fields, and of course with its requirement of minimizing waste, it must keep user information redundancy to a minimum. Which would work better: users able to add values to fields for themselves (in addition to system values), or a way for users to propose system values? Maybe the answer is in both, but that gets complicated, as it would require allowing users to add values themselves and then recommend for system wide usage, at which point the user would lose access to modify the value they created. I want consistency and extensibility, but there is so much to consider. There have been no procedures specified until now to handle more than 2 or 3 users on GITI, but if I want to get feedback and learn how to make GITI better, I am going to have to prepare it for more than the number of users in my comfort zone. There simply is no precedent in GITI’s history for the type of things I am wanting to accomplish.

 

Related Links:

http://www.pcfire.net/giti/ideals/ – The GITI Ideals

Tracklog Workflow

I am trying to find ways to shorten my GPS workflow by a bit. I use a GisTeq CD-110B tracklog recorder, and it writes a new log every time it powers up or down, which can create a lot of logs since the thing powers down after 15 minutes of inactivity and powers up when it’s in motion.

The present flow of things is a bit like this:

 

There is a good amount of manual stuff that I want to cut out. I have already shrunk the file conversion from GPS => GPX a bit, but coding a quick way to pass the files to the conversion software, but I would still like to reduce my involvement a lot more. I recognize that between Nikon Transfer and my varying geotag apps, I can’t shorten the photo involvement process, but I’m hoping to be able to shorten a lot of the file handling, but I’m not quite sure how to go about that just yet.

Bags, Bags, and More Bags

I am so sick of dealing with bags. I used to just think that my needs simply didn’t represent the majority of people, so therefore, I was having trouble picking a bag. Now, I am starting to think that the majority of bags just suck. I received my LowePro FastPack 250 this morning and at the moment I can’t say for certain that it will be around for another few days, because I am having trouble finding any redeeming qualities about it. Even though it was described in a way that made it sound like the perfect bag for me. I should state that other than my reservations about the bag, I think it is well made and could be a quality addition to any photographer’s bag collection.

The problems however are too great to ignore, at least for me.

  • First, the bag’s visual appearance is HUGE. It is much bigger than I feel that a bag like this should be (in depth).
  • Second, I tried putting in the Nikkor 70-300 lens, it didn’t fit. It fits in the camera area, but what if I am shooting with a lens other than it? Where does it go?
  • Third, I was told this bag had the LowePro SlipLock system… uh… yeah, kinda. It has ONE connector, on the right strap. A very bad spot in my opinion, unless you are sniper needing easy access to your ammo in that area. I cannot see strapping the 70-300’s Lens Case 3 to that position and still feeling comfortable walking around in public. My shoulder holster has 2 connectors, one on each side. This bag has a side with no zippers or other things blocking a connector from being there. If there were a slip lock connector on the side of the bag, it would resolve #2, and make #1 less annoying (a bag this fucking huge has to be able to handle a large lens).

My plan at the moment is to continue to tinker with the bag’s interior configuration a bit and see if I can come up with some workable solution, and/or find a good way to use the alternative connectors on the Lens Case 3 to attach the 70-300 to the bag. Other than those problems noted, I do like the bag, and feel that my equipment would be well protected and more accessible than in my holster (little compartments, so less lens cases hanging). The compartment for the laptop is perfectly sized. Its for a 15.4″ laptop, which I don’t think it can comfortably hold, but its absolutely perfect for my 13.3. I also like that the bag stands up by itself.

At the moment I am carrying the D90 with the 18-105mm inside of a Targus laptop backpack, its not very secure in there, and there isn’t much padding, but it kind of works. There isn’t room for the 70-300mm in or on this bag either, but that doesn’t bother me cause the bag is thinner, narrower and shorter than the LowePro bag, and I have space for the Lens Case 1, containing the Nikkor 35m f/1.8, to attach to the back of the bag (horizontally).

Bi-polar PC

While I have been amused by the completely unrealistic battery expectations of the T135 I am becoming less amused when it throws things in the other direction. I was beginning to worry a few minutes ago as I was told that I had 60% remaining on the primary battery, and that meant that I had 2.5 hours left…. WTF? I wasn’t doing anything, the hard drive was inactive and the fans were quiet. I decide to ignore the battery situation and just let the thing go about its business… check on the battery level again after a few minutes and then I’m told I have over 6 hours of battery remaining. I really wish this thing could calculate based on the amount of battery that I use on average to determine how much time to put on the clock. So far this system is performing well and I haven’t felt like I will be needing a longer lasting battery, but the jumping around bit gets to me. I prefer feeling secure in the availability of power on my system.