Cruftbox: My Box of Cruft

This will be my fourth trip to SxSW Interactive. Here are my hints for the conference, refined from my experience.
Introduce Yourself – People are at SXSW because they want to meet people and see new things. Strangely, many of the blogger types that go are introverted types that are a bit shy. Do yourself a favor and say “Hello, I’m So-and-so” to that person you are sitting next to. (Don’t say So-and-so, use your name…) I guarantee that they will be happy to talk to you.
ABC – Always Be Charging – If you bring a laptop, you need to be charging it every single chance you get. No battery lasts long enough. Try to sit near an oulet in the session rooms. Share power outlets with others.
Personal cards – Make up business cards with your name, email, and website info on them to hand out. Bring your regular business cards if you want, but what people really want is a card that ties you to your online persona so they can find you after SXSW.
Shiner Bock – Shiner Bock is a local Texas beer that you find everywhere. Often referred to as simply ‘Shiner’.
Fray Cafe – Go to the Fray Cafe on Sunday night. It’s one of the best things about SxSW.
Stay Warm – It can get cold and rain in Austin this time of year. Bring a good jacket or coat.
Sharpeners – There are no pencil sharpeners at SXSW. People think writing on a pad of paper with a wooden pencil is a bit strange.
The Backchannel – Be aware that there is a backchannel of real-time IRC discussion going on. Probably on irc.freenode.net, probably on #sxsw. The trick is to not make the backchannel into the front channel for you. It can distract you from listening to the speaker/session that you paid to see…
Secure connections – Wifi traffic is in the clear and people are sniffing packets all the time. Arrange for secure email, FTP, and if possible, secure browsing while at SXSW. It’s unlikely that a malicious hacker is gunna do bad things, but it’s best to be prepared.
Street Signs – For some reason, downtown Austin has few street signs. Get a map and study it before venturing out.
Food – Eat food. Austin has a great bar scene. You will be drinking. Don‘t drink on an empty stomach.
Texas BBQ – IMHO, Texas BBQ pales in comparison to BBQ in other areas like Kansas City and Carolina. That chopped beef sandwich stuff just doesn’t cut it, but people will want to eat it for lunch.
Say Hello to Me – This year, my brother Matt and friend Martin can’t make it, so I’ll be back to hitting SxSW solo. Email me or IM at pusateri AT gmail.com and I promise to respond.

Today is Wednesday, which to unrepentant newspaper readers like myself, means that it is food day. In the LA Times, there is the the Food section, and in the NY Times, there is the Dining Out section. Both are devoted to food and issues around food.
Two good articles to read:
In the NY Times, there is talk of the imminent opening of a Trader Joe’s in Manhattan. Trader Joe’s, long a staple of California food shopping, brings a wonderful food at a low price to New York. NYC denziens, do yourself a favor and get to Trader Joe’s. I recommend the Thai Chili Cashews (introduced to me by Brad) and the Sesame Pita Chips.
In the LA Times, there is long read about the Oxo brand of kitchen utensils, which I must admit I lust for when at Bed, bath, and Beyond. We have several Oxo items in the house, and it interesting to read about how they come into being.

I’m down in San Diego at the O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference or ETech as it is better known. I spent yesterday talking to many people, overhearing many conversations and listenig to the keynote speeches.
Bathed in wifi radiation, I was not surprised to hear plans for a million ways to make a million dollars. With Yahoo buying up the internet darlings, NBC buying iVillage (who?) for $600 million dollars (what?) to “IVillage immediately gives us scale and a profitable, established platform to expand our digital efforts” (wtf?).
Hell, I’d like to make a few millions too. I was even talking to people about my long orphaned Geekcalendar site that live in a perpetual pre-alpha in my head, filled with ideas on what to do and never actually doing anything about it.
The next big thing, that’s what everyone is after. “What the Alpha Geeks are into” is the catchphrase, but the feel of the conference is a bit different. The casual conversations are still mainly about neat things and hearing new ideas, but I fear the sessions may be a little more along the “this is how I made millions, and you can too”. We’ll see.
I’ve talked to several people about managing the huge amount of work that the advent of email and the internet have now allowed in business. Getting Things Done or GTD as it is commonly known, is what people are talking about as being the trick. I actually bought the book about six weeks ago and didn’t find time to read it. I spoke to Ben, a co-worker, about it and he said it makes a difference. I can get into the idea about having a flow-charted workflow of how to get things done, but I’m not sold on blending ‘work’ and ‘home’ into one inbox. I’ll finish the book and talk to more people before I make up my mind, but the overload of the office is not slowing down anytime soon.
I’m looking forward to seeing what people have to say today. If you want to keep up with what’s going on, check out Planet ETech for a potpourri of ETech posts.
Lastly, while I am not a tagaholic, like many, I will tag this post about etech. For those not aware of the word tagaholic, it describes a person that uses so many tags that they spend more time tagging content than actually writing it.

I make me even more busy, I have two trips this week.
Today I’m driving down to San Diego to the O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference. I spoke that the ETech conference two years ago and found it to be full of interesting ideas.
Then on Friday, I’ll be heading to Austin for my 4th year of SxSW Interactive.
If you are going to either one, drop me a line and let’s meet up.

Seen as a bumper sticker in the parking lot at work:
Better a bleeding heart than no heart at all.

Cousin James showed me this great feature of Firefox last week. If you aren’t using Firefox, you should be.
Most mornings I open the same daily links to check various sites. I used to use my personal links page, but now I use the Open in Tabs feature.

To get started, you make a folder in the Bookmarks toolbar by right-clicking and selecting New Folder. Name the folder something meaningful.

Next, drag bookmarks into the new folder so that when you click on the folder in the toolbar, you see the desired bookmarks.

Too open them all up, simply select the ‘Open in Tabs’

A just like that, all your desired sites are open and ready for browsing.
Nifty, eh?

As long time Cruft readers will know, I enjoy a cup of tea now and then. Recently I ran out of my usualy tea and was forced to use Michele’s tea bags in the morning. On a recent episode of Diggnation, Kevin mentioned he was getting tea from Adagio. If you don’t watch Diggnation, you should be.
I like to support Digg when I can and checked out the Adagio site to see the Kevin Rose Tea Sampler. The included types weren’t my cup of tea, (ROFL, I’m a punster!) so started wandering around the site. I was impressed with Adagio’s sampler tins. With tea I was getting from Golden Moon, it came in a large tin and took a while to drink it all. The site says that the sampler tins are good for about 10 cups of tea. At around $2 per sampler tin, it’s perfect for trying a variety of teas.

For $12 I bought six different types of tea. What a deal!

The sampler tins have cool little printed labels that show the preferred steeping temperature and duration. If this isn’t a geek tea, I don’t know what is.
So far, Michele and I have been impressed with the quality of the tea. Coconut is my current favorite and Michele is digging the Jasmine #5. I also think the Gunpowder is tasty with a little milk and sugar.

When I was young, I remember my mother buying me the original boxed Dungeons & Dragons set since she had heard it’s what ‘smart children’ played to stay ‘creative’. I spent endless hours pouring over the various books and modules absorbing the information. Thoughout my teen years I played with friends until I got to college when going out to parties suddenly seemed like a much better way to spend a Saturday night.
Last week I got a Dungeons & Dragons miniature in the mail. There had been a coupon for a free one in PC Gamer magazine and I sent it in. The girls saw it when I opened the box and were interested. I explained about D&D and they were interested. As a result picked up the Basic Set of the game one day at lunch.
I had read that the set was designed for kids and first time players. I read the books and info in the boz and it seemed to be perfect. The set includes a set of dice, miniatures for all the characters and monsters, pre-made characters, maps broken up by tiles, and an advanced rules book.

The entire first adventure is scripted out and designed to be run my people unfamiliar with D&D if need be. The pre-made character sheets were perfect for handing to the girls to get them started. We played through two rooms in which in the epic battles two kobalds were slain, a locked box was opened, and finally a troglydyte was put to death. The girls loved it. They seemed to enjoy the descriptions of what was happening much more than the dice rolling. When I described the death of one of the kobalds as having it’s head chopped off and rolling around the floor, it was bought up shortly thereafter at the dinner table as the girls described their adventure to Michele.
If you want to get started yourself, I recommend the Dungeons & Dragons Basic Game boxed set, it comes with everything you need to get started. I really liked the map tiles that allowed you to plop the tiles down as the adventurers got to that part of the dungeon and didn’t require drawing on graph paper. Yes, I know purists will complain, but when the players barely know the dice apart, map tiles are a great idea.
The only trouble was when the dog, Piper, stealthily stole the black dragon miniature and chewed on it a bit until Michele saw it. The dragon’s wings are a bit gnawed upon, but otherwise we are good.

This morning the team at work was in early (before 6AM) in case of problems with a power wiring upgrade. There were no problems and we all went to breakfast at Bob’s Big Boy, a local coffee shop (in the pre-Starbucks coffee shop sense, meaning a restaurant that serves basic food).
Besides my hash browns, bacon, and rye toast, I also had a cup of coffee. I carefully added the proper amount of sugar, stirred and happily sipped away as we debated the fine points of HVAC design and the risk of running on split generators.
I had drank about half the cup when waitress walked by with coffee pot in hand and refilled my cup. I hate that shit.
Yes, I know she’s just trying to provide good service, but to me, it’s a disservice and here’s why.

Note that with a fresh cup of coffee (or iced tea) you add the proper amount of sugar and/or cream (or in Sean’s case, soy) and once you find that perfect combo, you can enjoy the entire cup.
When you get halfway through the cup, the coffee to sugar ratio remains correct.
Now, when a waitress pours more coffee into the cup, they have diluted the ratio and you need to add more sugar. It’s not the end of the world, but at some coffee shops, they’ll try to refill your cup everytime you take a sip.
The same problem occurs with iced tea, and it’s even worse. With hot coffee, the sugar dissolves easily. In saner countries, they give you sugar syrup to sweeten cold liquids, but here in the good ole USA, you get granulated sugar. Dissolving granulated sugar is a pain and requires much stirring to accomplish properly. The last thing you want is to spend more time re-sugaring and stirring your iced tea everytime the waiter walks by and ‘tops off’ your iced tea.
You may be saying, “Mike, why do you worry about these things?” and I’ll agree, I am a wee bit eccentric on a few select topics, but this is a problem that happens to everyone. Many just suffer in silence, drinking poorly sugared beverages.

Not surprisingly, I think I have the solution. I took an old beer coaster and drew on it a bit. The idea is to place this over the coffee cup to ward off the evil refillers.
This could be worth millions! What do you think?

OK, I read the post on Jason Kottke’s site about the The case of the plane and conveyor belt, and quickly concluded that the plane cannot take off.
I was shocked, SHOCKED, to find smart people like Matt Haughey and Mike Buffington believing that the plane can take off.
Let me clear this up.
For an aircraft of any type to fly, it must overcome the constant acceration downward of gravity. Flying, for the most part, has little to do with speed and everything to do with the lifting force that counteracts the pull of gravity. Got that? Lifting force is all the matter to leave the ground and fly.
The question then is how do you generate enough lifting force. With a balloon, the lifting force is based on the fact that a bag of lighter-than-normal-air gas (usually hydrogen, helium, or hot air) will rise above normal (cold) air. Make sense? A balloon has no direct thrust or “push against air”, it simply has the lifitng force of the gas.
Now let’s look at an airplane. How does an airplane fly? An airplane flys off the ground solely because it can generate a lifting force. An airplane generates this lifting force by air flowing over an airfoil (known as a wing). The faster the air travels over the wing, the more lift is generated.
Planes that go fast can generate a lot of speed (air moving past the wings) can generate a lot of lift. If an airplne goes too slow, it doesn’t generate enough lift to counteract the force of gravity, and it falls to the ground. This is called a stall.
So, now that you are versed in the basics of aerodynamics, let’s look at the question of the airplane on the conveyer belt. The airplane will sit on the conveyer belt with engines blasting, tires rolling, and to the outside observer, standing in place. While tremendous forward force is being generated, there is no increase on the airflow over the wings.
So, if there is is no increased airflow over the wing, there is no lift. Without lift, the airplane CANNOT take off and fly. Let me repeat that key part, without lift, the airplane CANNOT take off and fly. It doesn’t matter how hard the engines ‘push the air’, there is no lift being generated in the conveyor belt scenario.
I hope you can now see clearly the correct answer to the ‘question’ is that the plane will not take off.
If you start to argue about the validity of the basic aerodynamic theory of lift, you might as well start arguing that the earth is flat or in creationism.
Update: After reading the comments it seems like the debate is hinging on whether the plane stays stationary or not. Obviously above I’m assuming the plane/conveyor belt contrapion is designed to hold the plane still. If that is not assumed then then the entire question is stupid and ridiculous. It’s then like asking can a plane take off in the rain or snow when the wheels slip.
If that’s really the point that the question poser is making then it’s fucking stupid. It’s like those stupid tests where the first line says “1) Read all instructions carefully before taking the test” and the last line says “57) Now that you’ve read all the instructions carefully, don’t do 2-56, write your name in and turn in the test.” Fuck that shit.