WIJFR: Daemon

Gaming genius Matthew Sobol, the 34-year-old head of CyberStorm Entertainment, has just died of brain cancer, but death doesn’t stop him from initiating an all-out Internet war against humanity. When the authorities investigate Sobol’s mansion in Thousand Oaks, Calif., they find themselves under attack from his empty house, aided by an unmanned Hummer that tears into the cops with staggering ferocity. Sobol’s weapon is a daemon, a kind of computer process that not only has taken over many of the world’s computer systems but also enlists the help of super-intelligent human henchmen willing to carry out his diabolical plan.

The hosts on just about every tech podcast I listen to (Leo Laporte, Tom Merrit, Paul Thurrott, and others) have mentioned “Daemon” by Daniel Suarez at one time or another, so it’s been on my to-read list for a while. I just finished reading this techno-thriller after starting it last month (as I headed to New York on business).

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Foscam FI8904W outdoor internet camera

I’ve been pleased so far with my in-house internet cameras and decided I’d like to be able to keep tabs on the outside of the house as well. TRENDnet sells weatherproof enclosures for their cameras but they won’t work with the night-vision models because the IR just reflects off of the glass. I started looking at other models of outdoor cameras and chose the Foscam FI8904W.

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Inception

Over the weekend I went and saw “Inception.” I didn’t know much about it except that the trailer looked pretty sweet and I had been hearing good reviews about it.

I really enjoyed it! It was like the mind/memory games of “Total Recall” combined with a heist film like “The Usual Suspects” with a healthy dose of special effects from “The Matrix.” The result is Christopher Nolan’s well-paced, action-packed, brain-bending thriller played out by a pretty good cast (although I still think of Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the little kid from “Third Rock from the Sun” ;-)).

The way they explained the physics and design (with paradoxes!) and flow of time in the dream world was pretty cool, all without really getting into any heavy details of how the dream-sharing technology worked (which would have been unnecessary anyway). Without spoiling anything, the final sequence, which involves four dream layers (a dream within a dream within a dream within a dream) with different time flows was amazing.

Unrelated side note: I did see the “Tron: Legacy” trailer on the big screen before the film, which wasn’t as exciting as it could have been since I had already seen it on the internet.

Netgear MCA1001 MoCA adapters

Since I was facing a re-org of my media cabinet to set up my new TiVo Premiere, I took the opportunity to make some network changes as well. I’m not quite ready to upgrade my wireless network to the N standard that was finally ratified last year but still wanted good throughput so I could stream and download HD video to the new Tivo box. After doing some research and reading good reviews, I decided to try out MoCA, or ethernet-over-coax.

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TiVo Premiere

It’s been almost three years since I bought a new TiVo, so it was time. I’ve added the new TiVo Premiere to my main home theater setup, relegating my trusty, original Series3 box to home office duty.

I already had the 1TB WD Expander drive from the Series3, so rather than spend the extra cash on the Premiere XL, I went with the base 320gb model and then connected the Expander giving me 190 hours of HD recording capacity.

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Jailbreaking my iPhone

I couldn’t resist any longer: the recent exceptions added to the DMCA for jailbreaking allowed for the return of jailbreakme.com, the easiest way yet to jailbreak your iPhone. Just about every podcast I listen to/watch had talked about this and demoed it live so I figured what the heck? I made a full backup of my iPhone 3GS with iTunes and then fired up Safari …

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New theme

You might notice a slightly different look to the blog today, compared to yesterday (or the last time you visited). I switched from Srini G’s Fluid Blue theme (which I’ve been using ever since I moved to WordPress) to his updated F2 theme (which is basically Fluid Blue optimized for WordPress 3.x).

Other than moving my sidebar to the left, and a few other minor customizations, the look-and-feel is basically the same. I also took this opportunity to learn how to use theme inheritance so my customizations aren’t lost when the original theme is updated by the author.

Everything should be working but if you come across something that’s broken or looks strange, please let me know!

SysAdmin Day 2010

Let’s face it, System Administrators get no respect 364 days a year. This is the day that all fellow System Administrators across the globe, will be showered with expensive sports cars and large piles of cash in appreciation of their diligent work. But seriously, we are asking for a nice token gift and some public acknowledgement. It’s the least you could do.

Consider all the daunting tasks and long hours (weekends too.) Let’s be honest, sometimes we don’t know our System Administrators as well as they know us. Remember this is one day to recognize your System Administrator for their workplace contributions and to promote professional excellence. Thank them for all the things they do for you and your business.

It’s July 30th again, so Happy System Administrator Appreciation Day! I guess if I used Twitter I would tweet this, but I don’t, so I won’t. 😛 I’m sure someone else did anyway …

“More” means less

I just discovered the “More” tag in WordPress. Since some of my posts tend to be long and contain a lot of images, using the “More” tag will a) make me focus on writing better and more interesting introductory paragraphs to my posts and b) provide a cleaner, shorter home page that loads faster with less inline images.

I’ve gone back and updated my last few posts to include the tag. Going forward, please bear with me as I try to find a good balance of when using “More” makes browsing the home page easier vs. it just being annoying because you can’t see the entire post without clicking another link.