Cruftbox: My Box of Cruft

Yesterday, I arrived back in LA from New York and saw that there was a meeting for LA bloggers in downtown LA. With Michele & the kids still out of town, seemed like a good thing to do.
Before the meetup, I went to have a drink with Len, Monique, and Darby before heading to the train station to take me downtown. They were having dinner in Pasadena and wanted to give back some stuff from the Crawfish party I had loaned them.
The Gold Line to Union Station, switch to the Red Line and pop up at Pershing Square. I was one block away from the meeting at the Biltmore. For $3 I had an all day pass and avoided traffic and parking costs. Taking the train > driving.
The group was gathered at couches near the bar and an impressive tab was building. I pulled a chair and started chatting. IIRC, I chatted with Jeff Koga, Will Campell, Kathy, Kathy’s friend from St. Louis (who’s name I forget, but remember is a Lotus notes guru), Ponzi (Chris‘s girlfriend), Sean, and briefly with Wil (trying to convince him to try Neverwinter Nights). There were a dozen more people I didn’t get a chance to meet with. They passed around a paper for people write their names & URLs onto, but I don’t know what happened to it.

Here’s a photo of the group taken with my digital happy snap with it’s weak flash. I Photoshopped in a fill flash, so pardon the quality. We didn’t seem to have any of the serious photographer bloggers in the hizzou.
I think this gathering could get converted into a regular event. The downtown Biltmore seems like neutral ground for the Westside & Valley bloggers. The drink prices were high, but other than that the spot was good, with supposed wifi lurking. Next time, I’m bringing my sporadically blogging wife. She never turns down a chance to go out for a drink.
Update: Looks like I go things confused. I was actually talking with Jay Bushman, not Will Campell at the meetup. My apologies. All the more reason we need nametags at these things. Jay is a good guy and we agreed about most things, except that Nightmare Before Christmas was a great movie. He says it was terrible. It must have been the gin talking.

In an earlier post, I mentioned that I had found a way to sync one install of FeedDemon to another. It’s simple in theory but a little more complicated when you actually do it. Alex Hunter asked me to explain how to do it.
All of the information about how you’ve configured FeedDemon is stored in the C:\Documents and Settings\Mike\Local Settings\Application Data\Bradsoft.com\FeedDemon\1.0 directory. The exact location will probably vary on your machine unless you name is Mike as well.
What I do is zip up the entire 1.0 directory and upload it to a directory on some web space. You could do the same thing with removable storage, but online storage works for me.
When I’m at a computer where I want to sync up FeedDemon, I simply download the zipped file and unzip it into the same C:\Documents and Settings\Mike\Local Settings\Application Data\Bradsoft.com\FeedDemon\1.0 directory having the unzipping process overwrite any existing files as needed.
Boot up FeedDemon, and viola, it is configured just as the location I zipped the files was configured. It’s a little complicated but I think that in time the process can be automated within FeedDemon itself. It might take some time for this to be done, Nick Bradbury, the author of FeedDemon, is having neck surgery. Amazing, since I was just playing kickball with in February at SXSW. Until then I can manually sync the aggregator.
Perhaps I need to learn how to write a simple script that executes the zip and upload for me. I think that winzip allows for command line scripting. If you figure it out, let me know.

In the New York Times Health section, there was a great article on caffeine intoxication. All you coffeeholics should read it. Some of you have that darting eyes look about you and can’t seem to pay attention well.
After reading that, go check out the list of caffeine content of various drinks. Another list shows slightly higher values.
Putting this in perspective, a single large Starbucks coffee (500+ mg caffeine) has roughly the equivalent of FOUR cans of Red Bull or a SIXPACK of Mountain Dew soda in caffeine dosage.
So people please, watch your caffeine intake. Try to keep to the recommended 250 mg per day.

Last night was Passover.
I am not a religious man, but I have to say that Passover is my favorite religious holiday. Like many holidays, it is a time when family gathers together for a meal. Different than many holidays, Passover is a living, changing holiday. Passover is about the journey of the Jewish people both today and thousands of years ago. Unlike some holidays that are locked into events that occured long ago, Passover examines the continuing quest of the Jewish people for a better life.
The basic idea behind Passover is for the youth to be told the story of the deliverance of the Jewish people out of Egypt and into Israel. Quite a good tale, if all the movies about it are any sign.
The story has been told over and over the centuries as the Jews have been through good and bad times, to remind them that in the end, their current struggles will subside and things will get better. Even while in the concentration camps in World War II, the Jews celebrated Passover, looking toward the future. As new history is made, so changes the story of Passover and the path to peace that lies ahead.
This year I was proud as my eldest daughter, Zoe, read the four questions in the Haggadah (the script for Passover). It doesn’t seem that long ago that I was reading the same questions from the strange book with the pages backward.

Here Zoe & Mira negoitate the price for the Afikoman with my father-in-law, Steve. We need to work on this since they gave into his first offer. They could have gotten much more out of him.

Thanks to a note from a reader of my post about self-publishing, I was able to track down a copy of the book NeoAddix by Jon Courtney Grimwood. It winged it’s way to me from England and I read it in the last couple days.
NeoAddix by Jon Courtney Grimwood
After about the third paragraph of NeoAddix, I knew it fit seamlessly into the world I first encountered in ReMix, Grimwood’s third novel. The world takes place in a slightly alternative future where France still has aristocracy and the advancement of genetic engineering is common place. The world has a harsh edge to it. The boundary of right and wrong is blurry and power is the goal above all else including money or fame.
The story wanders into themes of the corruption of power, the future of medicine, and the interconnectedness of crime. I was suprised to find that several of the characters int he book are mentioned in the later books. In fact, they play key roles. Alex Gibson and Razz both appear in ReMix with references to them that I really didn’t understand. Now I have a clear picture as to where they came from.
The cyberpunk style is much like William Gibson with a future that doesn’t need a lot of explanation, but with a harder edge of world spanning conspiracy and cruelty. The book was hard to get, but worth it. The second book in the series, Lucifier’s Dragon, is on order from England now. It looks to continue on in the world Grimwood has created.

In about a half hour I’m heading to the airport for a trip to Cincinnati to catch up with the girls and spend some time with family. On short notice, I have to go to New York as well for business.
So if you are in Cincy or NYC, drop me a line.
Have a good weekend, I know I will.

I was talking to my friend Joe at the Crawfish party last weekend and got to talking about blogging. In my drunken state, I demanded he get a blog and begin writing immediately. He’s an English major for christ’s sake.
When I sobered up I took a few moments and helped get his blog up and rolling. So go check out FlickerBlamPow and give him some comment love.
Yes, yes, it’s the default MT template. I added in RSS & Atom feed linsk though. If one of you CSS saavy types wants to help him out with design help, it would be awfully kind.
He’s only got one post so far, but I think once he gets rolling, it will be good.
In other blog news:
Paul has a crow’s nest outside his office with little eggs in it.
MisterP is against all marriage.
Sonny hates The Flaming Lips. WTF? I love the Flaming Lips!
Kathy thinks best while naked.

After another day of pain in my right arm, I’ve realized I’ve got to do something serious about it. I can’t do my job if my arm hurts so much.
In thinking about it, at night I spend the most time on the computer gaming. Hours on end. This is causing the repetitive stress in my arm.
There’s only one thing I can do to solve the problem. I need to get off the computer, and that means I need to stop playing computer games. Yes, I really like games, but I have to have priorities.
Instead of gaming so much, I’ll spend more time watching TV and sleeping. I haven’t done enough this in the past, and it’s time I did.

I finally took the plunge and chose a syndication aggregator. My blogrolling list was getting out of hand and there are lots of sites that don’t ping places so I know when they’ve updated.
Here are a couple things I wanted in an aggregator for my home use.
1) Handled RSS & Atom feeds
2) Separate app from email and browser
3) Displayed CSS & images of feeds
4) Auto-discovery of feeds
5) Auto-search for terms
6) Runs on my platform – Windows XP
I looked at several good apps, but in the end, I chose FeedDemon. I found it had pretty much everything I wanted.
I like the interface.

It’s not for everyone, but it works for me.
I used it extensively at SXSW to keep track of things and I even got to speak to the guy behind FeedDemon, Nick Bradbury. He explained a few things to me and now I know how to sync up multiple computers with FeedDemon on it so I see the same sites at home and on my laptop.

Over the weekend, I finished another book.
The King’s Coat – Dewey Lambdin
I am a huge fan of the C. S. Forrester series on Horatio Hornblower. I tried reading Patrick O’Brien’s books on the Age of Sail, but I don’t like his style.
Last holiday season, I was wandering in the book store looking for gifts when I spied a book with an obvious nautical theme. I looked it over and saw that it was the latest novel by Lambdin in his Alan Lewrie series.
At home I googled up the info and found the first book in the series was The King’s Coat. I added it to my wishlist. After several months I got the chance to order and read it.
Lambdin’s style is good. Much more like Forrester than the wordy O’Brien style. The story begins with our hero, Alan Lewie, being booted out of his aristocratic luxury and into the navy as a midshipman. Not knwing one whit about seamanship, Lewrie finds himself in a world of hurt. To the reader’s amazement, we find that Lewrie takes to the sea and life in the Navy like a duck to water.
The main differences in the style of the book to that of Forrester and O’Brien are clear. Lewrie is a randy chap. He enjoys the company of women and the author points this out at every occasion, pairing our hero with lonely wives in secret rendezvous. Also, the author believes in cursing, as do I. In this book, the characters are sailors and they swear like them. Often.
Plot and action are good, in accordance with typical Age of Sail norms with duels, gun battles, boardings, and mass destruction. The only thing I can fault the author with is an obsession with correct and detailed sailing info on the exact configuration of the sails. Mr. Lambdin is obviously a sailor himself and wants us to know that he knows what he is talking about. Passage after passage about the current set of canvas fill the novel. Here’s an actual quote from the book:

To ease the wind aloft, Ariadne came more southerly to take the wind abeam. Waisters hauled in braces to larboard. With the third reef came the need for preventer braces and backstays, parrels aloft to keep the yards from swinging and flogging sails, not so much with an eye to sail or yard damage, but to keep the topmen from being flung out and down by a heavy smack by the flying canvas.

See what I mean. I’ve read dozen’s of books like this and passages like this still make me scratch my head at passages like this.
But this point is minor. If you like the Jack Aubrey and Horatio Hornblower books, then you will enjoy the Alan Lewrie series.