What’s new and exciting?

A long time ago in a neighborhood far far away a computer guy was born… Well, actually it was only 5 minutes from my current house but that’s beside the point. The point is that I’m that guy. A long time ago I was told by my father to do what I love and I’ll never work a day in my life. With that, I learned to find the love in almost everything I’ve had to do (and believe me it was hard sometimes). So I’ve never worked. The second thing was, work at a different company every year till you’re 30 then you’ll have a breadth of knowledge that will serve you forever. I did and it is true.

I got to where I am now because my joy is finding solutions to problems and I use various forms of technology. It’s like having a magic wand in my back pocket. My problem though is centered around not believing anybody needs anything I know. Yes, I know it sounds silly seeing as how I’ve had a couple Google top 10 search results from this blog and emails from around the world but I never believe those results and write articles very rarely. That’s all going to change now because talking to my cousin Shyra today I got a good verbal spanking. It started with, “You have information in that head of yours that a million people would love to have!!!  Get to blogging!!!”

Not to say that I haven’t heard the same things from my wife, clients, and a lot of people on Facebook that find the observant craziness in my writing amusing but it just takes one thing sometimes to get you on the ball. All social media outlets watch out. Here I come! Also, if you know more and want to give me a good verbal spanking to get me on the right course go for it!

I’m just going to say it for the record. The Amazon Kindle goes on my list of one of the greatest tech toys I’ve ever gotten. I’ve had mine for about a month now and it’s been absolutely fantastic. The page looks so much like text printed on a page that I’ve been able to read books left and right. This comes at such a good time too because I’ve been running around too much to sit and read an actual book. I have tried to set a goal for myself of reading 40 books a year. Last year was my first year and I conquered my goal.  That may have had to do with the fact that I had a broken leg for a month and a half so all I did was read books during that time. This year however, has been a challenge due to the fact that I’ve been moving around a lot. All the driving has me a little out of the flow of reading.

The Kindle solved all of these problem. First, I carry it everywhere just like my mp3 player. I started to count audiobooks into this equation late last year therefore I really enjoyed putting audiobooks on my mp3 player. The Kindle solved that too with it’s very listenable text-to-speech (TTS). I had written a script in Linux to grab PDF’s off my server, convert them to text and feed them into the program Festival (a TTS program) for this purpose but now I don’t need to (or so I thought but read on). The Kindle proved very easy to listen to and not too robotic. I had a collection of PDF books on my server that I used Calibre to convert to .mobi format instead of the proprietary .azw format of the Kindle.

Then it all fell apart. Amazon was sued by the audiobook companies. They have overhead. They pay people to read the books for their audio versions. Who was I to get a book and think I could have my personal robot read it to me? How obsurd.  I jest because I was really pissed that Amazon just caved in instead of giving them a fight. So, somehow Amazon decided to turn off the feature for your Kindle to read most books to you unless it gets authorization from the publisher. I found the book I bought recently did not have that authorization and since it was originally published two years ago I doubt they’d try to find out if they could get it. So, I’m kind of screwed there.

Scrreeecch! Hit the brakes! You thought I gave up there? Please… There are tools to convert and rip .azw files. Calibre won’t do it and neither will Stanza but they tell you to find 3rd party programs. That’s a slick way of saying, “Hey if you can find it out there I won’t look. Once you’re finished bring it back to me and I’ll handle the rest.” So, off to find these 3rd parties. I will let you know what I find. Especially if I can come up with a command line program to do it. That way I’ll have the files converted and ready for my Kindle seconds after it notices it’s plugged in. The script will copy new .azw’s convert them and put them back as .mobi files.

The love of tech continues.

I was at a PTA-like meeting last night at one of my sons schools with my wife (it’s actually like a class but that’s a whole other story). Next thing you know we were talking about “Things that get in the way of our children’s success.” Of course sooner or later subjects like Myspace, instant messaging and porn come up. It soon became quite a hot topic when some parents believed children should never have computers in their rooms.

I have a lot of thoughts on this subject being a young curious kid myself. However, no sooner had I thought about all the things I could say before my wife redirects the crowds attention to me explaining how our kids don’t have this problem. In short I explained to the class that a computer in the room is like having a whole bookshelf full of books because of all you can learn and that with some small tweeks you can provide some amount of safety. However, if I had wanted to spend more time on the subject I would have taken a different tact to address a more pessimistic mother.

After the class seemed appeased with the fact that they can provide a good amount of internet safety, one pessimistic mother had something to add. “Children will always find a way around whatever you do.” I didn’t respond however I was at first insulted by her defeatist attitude before I realized that the core of the problem was elsewhere. The child.

I tell companies this all the time as well as families: “The computer is a tool just like a hammer is.” That’s it! It may be slicker looking, made of plastic and metal and have lights but it’s just a tool. A hammer can be used to build a house or kill someone. It all depends on the operator of that tool. In the context of the class, I could have provided security on the level of the CIA on that computer however, just like with a hammer, if you want to do something malicious there are hammers laying around all over town.

“There is no new thing under the sun” is a verse from Ecclesiastes 1:9 (which I searched for on the internet). It holds true for all the things we talked about in class that people who watch the news all the time need to realize. Our world is no worse than 2000 years ago when Jesus was here and people felt it was the end of times. People afraid of homosexuals in office don’t realize that most of the Greek and Roman senates were openly gay back then. Murder and mutilation were paraded in the streets. Rape happened often. The world hasn’t changed it’s just newer and faster tools.

The cycle continues you just need to focus on the operators not the tools.