I’ve been toying with some logo ideas for BarCampMadison. I wanted to incorporate the dome of the capitol building with the BarCamp flame. Here are the results so far.

There are more ideas on the BarCampMadison wiki’s Logo page. I’m still not happy with this. I wanted to use a simple illustration of the dome, but I don’t have one, and haven’t created one yet.

Hey, it’s a work in progress… Got any better ideas?

(If you haven’t signed up for BarCampMadison yet, do so now… and if you can help sponsor, or know any organizations that can help sponsor, get in touch with me.

(Updated: Here is the red/white one people are mentioning…)

I spent some time evaluating the web sites of some Milwaukee design firms, and I’ve gotta say, I was sadly disappointed. I do not want to name names, because I’m going to discuss actual trends rather than specific issues. (Plus, I know people at many of these companies, and to be fair, I should disclose that I do work for at least two design firms in the area.)

Also, if you have not read my posts on Business Web Site tips, you may want to see them now: #253, #267, #271, #285, #301. Many of them apply…

The overall trends I saw were the following:

• Inability to print pages/content
• Inability to resize or select text
• Inability to open multiple windows/tabs due to navigation using Flash
• Music playing on page load (with no way to stop it)
• Text as an image, or within Flash, which does not get indexed by search engines

Overall, many of the problems of poor usability were caused by Flash. (I know, I have a history of being somewhat anti-Flash, but so often Flash is anti-usability, so it all works out.) Many of the sites I evaluated had just one or two results in Google, which is probably not ideal for companies that want potential clients to find them.

To be fair, I know many design firms end up not overhauling their sites for a long time because they are too busy doing client work, but honestly, most of them looked like graphic or visual designers with no background in usability designed them.

Milwaukee design firms, it may be time for a reboot…

When I have to use a Windows machine for long periods of time, it hurts my fingers.

Why? Look at your keyboard. Put your left thumb on the Ctrl key, and your left index finger on the W key, now on the C key, and then on the V key. Now try it again, but put your thumb on the Alt key (or Command key, for use Mac users.)

Which is more natural? putting my thumb on the Command key on my Mac feels natural. I am not stretching and crossing my fingers over to hit the target keys. Using Windows, my thumb has to go way to the left, underneath my index finger.

Is it just me, or does the same thing happen to you?

I’m pretty sure the ink in my Epson 777 inkjet printer is not actually frozen, but I’m wondering if the cold affects the ink. See, we keep it pretty cold in the house (lower heating bills!) and in the office where the printer sits, it’s cold. About a week ago, I tried to print a few pages, and all I got was faint lines on the page. I tried to clean the heads, recalibrate, etc. but no luck. I ended up putting in a new color cartridge, and that did the trick.

This week, the same thing happened again. Keep in mind that the printer worked fine just 3 days ago, and that we normally don’t print everyday. So today I got the same problem, nothing but faint lines, even after head cleaning and many tries.

So is my ink too cold? I think I may try to warm up the cartridges and put them back in the printer to see if that has any effect.

In the last two weeks I was twice asked to hand over my driver’s license. The first was at a local university library. This library only allows members of the university to enter the facility, but you are allowed to bring a guest. I was a guest. In the past they’ve asked for my driver’s license to hold while I was in the building, as insurance that I would return to get it back. Things have changed now, and they make a photocopy of your driver’s license, and hold that, and then give it back to you when you leave.

To be fair, they did ask for another form of ID. In fact, they seemed rather irate that I did not have another form of ID. Do most people have more than one form of ID? If you’re not a student, or work in some huge corporation, do you?

Anyway, the guy at the library desk mumbled on about how some people (liberals, I presume) were all “up in arms” about having to surrender their driver’s licenses (and with identity theft nowadays, who can blame them?) He reluctantly took my driver’s license and made a copy of it, and let me in. When I left the library, I was given the photocopy that I was now tasked with destroying.

While at a local department store, we wanted to use their scanner to choose items for our registry, and again, they asked to hold my driver’s license (so we wouldn’t run off with the scanning gun.) I assume this is a common practice at many places, which begs the question, is this legal? Is it legal in Wisconsin? What about other states? It may be the same situation where you are not required to give out your social security number to anyone except the government, but good luck trying to get a job or anything else in this country without revealing it to organizations along the way.

I’m half-tempted to make a fake ID, actually, it would be a “real ID” for the next time I go to the library. It will have all of my information on it, but will be from my own organization, not from the State of Wisconsin. Think they’ll let me in?

The folks at WITI MyFoxMilwaukee.com are putting on Blog-A-Palooza in Milwaukee. It’s scheduled for Wednesday January 31st, 2007, from 5PM to 9PM.

It’s a shame I can’t make it. Who knows, they might wanted to have talked to Wisconsin’s first blogger, podcaster, and videoblogger. (I’m pretty sure I hold the title for all three of those…)

I’ve not really had any experience with Road Runner tech support, but my cousin called me the other day and said she spent 30+ minutes on the phone with them trying to fix a connectivity issues, and they finally gave up, and told her the problem was with her computer.

But they forgot two things: She owns a Mac, and she knows me…

She said that she could get to web sites by typing in the IP address, but not the domain name. Figure it out yet? I had her open the Network Preferences, type in the DNS Servers I got from OpenDNS, and she was up and running.

I think our call lasted less that 2 minutes. Obviously I should be in the tech support business…

My bummin’ slummin’ friends have all got new boots… Ok, maybe not, but I got a new pair of boots.

I couldn’t find my old winter boots last week (I haven’t worn them since last year) and was convinced Dana threw them out. She threatened to do so last year, because honestly, they suck. I’m pretty sure I got them from the trash, and they might be 30 years old by now. (She didn’t actually get rid of them, she just hid them so I’d be forced to buy new ones, which is what you have to do when dealing with me.)

Anyway, I went to look for boots. Now, keep in mind, I have not been winter boot shopping since my Mom took me some time in the 1970s, so I had no idea what to expect. When I was a kid, boots were huge, unwieldy monsters you strapped onto your feet which made it difficult to walk, but kept your feet warm. No so today…

I asked the guy at the store where the big winter boots were, the ones with a 1/2 inch of black insulated liners. He said that unless I was going ice fishing all day long, I didn’t need those, and besides, almost no one makes or sells those anymore.

On the left, the “curbside specials” I’ve been using for, oh, I dunno, possibly 20 years… And on the right, a pair of North Face Chilkats. These things are amazing. They are so light and comfortable, it just seems wrong. I’m too used to barely being able to walk, let alone run with boots on. They were less than $70 on sale, and I figure they should last at least 10 years, so I’m all set for now with boots. (Unless there is some amazing new breakthrough in boot technology I just have to have, like, you know, if Apple, Inc. starts making iBoots or something.)

Sunday morning, around 7 AM… I couldn’t sleep, so I got up, suited up, and went out snowboarding.

The local ski/snowboard hill doesn’t even open until 10AM, so I just found a local sledding hill (which was empty at 7:30 on a Sunday morning.) Now, I’m still pretty much a beginner, so a small-to-medium sized sledding hill is all I need to keep me busy for a while.

I think I lasted under an hour. Going down the hill is no problem, that’s the easy part… The hard part is hiking back up the hill. It also started snowing pretty heavily, so the stupid eyeglasses were getting foggy and snow-covered.

Still, it was a lot of fun, and I’ve scoped out about 3 or 4 other hills in the area to try out. Luckily, we’ve got a good amount of snow now, and it should stick around until March if we’re lucky. Yay snowboarding!

I’ve had an iPod for just over a year now, so I thought I would make a few notes on it. I know the iPod is a beloved product, and the music player in some people’s minds, but it, like any other product (by Apple or otherwise) could use some improvements…

I have the 5th generation 30GB iPod with video. It was given to me by the lovely Dana. Before the iPod I was using a Rio 500, and an iRiver IPF-180T.

I had one annoying issue with syncing my iPod, but other than that, it’s been pretty much problem-free.

Now, in comparison, the Rio 500 still beats the iPod for bookmarking. The Rio has a button that will set a bookmark in any MP3 file. No so with the iPod. It does not support bookmarking of any audio file. This is annoying, especially as it was a feature I used daily, and had to give up on when I moved to the iPod.

The iPod does remember what is playing when you turn it off and continues from there (of course my cassette player did this in 1975 as well) but this fails when you plug your iPod into your computer! So if I’m half way through a podcast, and then want to charge or sync my iPod, it forgets where I was after ejecting, and I’m back at the home screen, and damned if I can remember what I was listening to. Sucks…

The iPod interface is simple, but I know at least one other person who has one that occasionally will not turn off, and has said “Couldn’t they just put a damn ON/OFF button on it?” Sometimes mine won’t turn off, so I just put it in my bag and hope it turns off automatically after a few minutes.

The iPod interface also requires you to look, or at least be able to feel around and guess where to push. Other players (with actual buttons) allow you to memorize where the buttons are and what they do. I could operate my Rio while driving and never take my eyes off the road. This seems to be a big concern with the iPhone as well, it will require visual attention to be able to use it.

The Rio kicks the iPod to the curb in regards to bookmarking, but that’s about it. As for the iRiver, the one I have is a cheap, low-end model, and the interface is horrible. The advantages it has is that it can record using a built-in microphone (I wish mine has an audio input though) and has an FM tuner. You can also combine these and record live from the radio. I guess it also plays WMA files, but I don’t have any of those. I mainly use it as a cheap, portable recording device, even though the quality is fairly poor in noisy situations. (I did use it to record myself snoring once.)

In summary, I do love the iPod, but it’s not the ultimate player. It could use some improvements. I’m not sure Apple will ever improve it to my satisfaction, but I thought it was worth critiquing.

(This post just talks about the iPod as an audio player. I plan to follow-up with it’s use as a video player as well.)

I’ve got a Nokia 7610. I like it. I use Cingular, and so far, I don’t hate them.

My phone runs the Symbian OS. It’s a Series 60 device. There are a whole lot of applications I can install on it. A whole bunch of applications.

I’ve installed a bunch of applications on my Nokia phone. I still manage to make and receive calls just fine, and I’m 99% sure I’ve never disrupted the Cingular network in any noticeable way. If an application I’ve installed misbehaves I usually just delete it. There is at least one app I use that doesn’t quit, and I use another utility to force it to quit. (Hmmm, my Mac does something similar with applications that get stuck.) There is one game I installed that froze my phone so bad, I had to remove the battery to reset it, Luckily, removing the battery was very easy, and I don’t use that application anymore. Besides those two bad app(les) they other two dozen applications I’ve installed work just fine.

Just fine…. Just like almost all the other phones out there that people have installed applications on.

I didn’t just randomly pick this phone, I got a Nokia phone so I could take photos, shoot video, record audio, and transfer the things I created to my computer under my control. I can create my own ringtones at no cost. I can sync the calendar with my desktop calendar (though I do need iCal in the loop to make it happen.) I can sync my contacts with my desktop contacts. Damn, it’s pretty good. Things work. I like my phone and how it works.

Nokia is a big believer in open source. I like open source. I like to use my phone (which is really a mobile computer) for all sorts of things Nokia and Cingular probably don’t care about. Have you seen the Nokia 770 or N800? Those are cool devices, very open to new applications and new ideas. All of the Nseries devices look interesting.

Remember, we still have choices, and we vote for those choices with our dollars and our words.

After the Web414 meeting last week I ran MacStumbler on the drive home to see what I could find. I was surprised by how many networks it saw while driving 65mph on I-94…

Here’s a few open wifi networks I found along the way:

• ProHealthCareGuest
• Enters
• michaelswireless
• PFH
• binc-public
• stone creek coffee

There were also a some ‘linksys’ and ‘belkin’ and a whole bunch named orange, orange12, orange13, orange14, etc…

These were closed, but I found the names amusing or interesting:

• Dream Kitchens
• klotka
• TowerSpecial
• oconomowoc
• trec
• Midwest Law
• Nomad
• EyesOff
• Kronos Wireless
• J&J Awesome Wireless
• Pruscha for Mayor

The last two tie for my favorite, ‘J&J Awesome Wireless’ and ‘Pruscha for Mayor’ - I mean, one is awesome and the other is an advertisement for a mayoral candidate!

We put a Linksys NSLU2 in place about 4 months ago with two 500GB drives attached. One drive is meant to mirror the other for backup purposes. (See Small Business - Server & Backup)

Things have not been perfect. At least a few times in the last month I’ve had to reboot the NSLU2 because it could not be seen on the network. In most cases pulling out the power cord, plugging it back in, and powering on the device solves things, but really, should we have to do that? Shouldn’t the thing just work?

We’ve also had some weird permission problems. We’re a Mac-shop, and most of the files don’t really rely on having their unixy-permissions correct, but some do, like the files that go onto the web sites. A file on my Mac set to -rw-r–r– gets copied to the NSLU2 and is then set to -rwx——. This is bad bad bad! If we try to upload files directly to a web site, or even to our Macs, and then to a web site, they can’t be viewed, as the permissions are hosed.

I’m also not happy about the fact that we can’t plug the NSLU2’s drives into a Mac and get to the files. I’ve tried using Mac OS X Ext2 Filesystem but it didn’t work. This means if the NSLU2 dies, we would have to get another one to get to the files.

I think the NSLU2 is a nice little device for the hacker to play with, or maybe for a home network of Windows machines, or even Macs, where file permissions don’t matter, but I’m just not sure it can cut it for a small business.

I know other companies make NAS devices that may fit our needs, but looking at the Apple AirPort Extreme, it just might fit the bill. It probably doesn’t have some of the nice features of the NSLU2, but we could easily add a USB hub and our external drives and be up and running. I trust Apple hardware to be reliable, easy to use, and work seamlessly with our Macs. The price is about double the NSLU2, but it may be worth it.

We have two other options right now. We could install Linux on the NSLU2 and see if that fixes the problems. My reservation there is that NSLU2-Linux is a hacker project and I’m not sure what we’d lose/gain by switching what is running on the NSLU2.

The second option would be to take an old iMac running Mac OS X and attach the drives to it. This should take care of our permission problems, and also make it easy to attach the drives to any other Mac as needed. The downside here is that the iMac is older and since it would have to be running all the time it could fail. It also does not have some of the features of the NSLU2, but I can probably add them with a few cron jobs and Perl-fu.

So right now we may stick it out with the NSLU2 as is, but I’m always looking for better solutions.

Wow, I am so hyped about the Macworld 2007 Keynote!

I don’t know what products will be announced today, but I’m 50% sure that in about 4 years, I might be able to afford some of them. Used. On ebay.

Awesome!

(P.S. Dear Mac people, please don’t cause the interweb to meltdown today, some of us have work to do…)

Didn’t I recently mention that I’m not a fan of Microsoft?

That said, the Windows Home Server actually looks cool. I mean, the concept is cool, but from what I can see so far, it’s (get ready) only of any use to you if you use Windows. So, for a home network consisting of computers running Mac OS X and Linux, it has no place…

But for folks running Windows and nothing else, hey, it looks pretty nifty!