Draining Myself
This fall has been interesting. Working toward getting out of the computer sector by getting an English and Religion degree is something I've been working on for awhile now (as noted in the linked post), but this was the first semester I was entirely devoted to this rather than meeting general education requirements and the like. Trying to balance obligations has been tough, and some less important projects that I normally work on as part of my business have gone by the way side… at least temporarily.
As I said a few weeks ago, business has been a bit slow, so I was focusing completely on papers. Since the beginning of November, I have probably written between 70-80 pages, about 60-62 on major papers. Now into finals week, I've written 28 pages in longhand over the past 24 hours over the course of six hours worth of exams (hey, that's 4.7 pages per hour). Now I hurt. I have the bad habit of gripping the pen very tightly when writing in such a manor, and my arm hurts from the bottom all the way to my shoulder. Even if I was not trying to work with clients and complete this course work, this has been the craziest semester of any kind, I've ever had. I've felt on the edge of insanity the last few weeks trying to get stuff done — I'm not the kind of person who likes to be working against the edge of a deadline. I feel completely drained.
But, I'm not complaining. It feels good. I can look back and I'm satisfied. I've spent the last four months immersing myself in the things that I love to spend time doing. It will be years before I am able to switch professions, who knows, I may never switch completely — but the point is I know that I am doing what I need to do; what I should have realized I needed to do a long time ago. If you can be so busy that you have no time to catch your breath and still be happy with what you are doing, that is an excellent indicator… I fit that to a “t” right now.
QOTW: Sleep
As if a busy day was not enough to make me tired, a gentle, peaceful rain is falling right now. Which leads me to think I'll call it an early night and get some sleep. And for the question of the week:
What is your favorite sound for sleeping?
Most white noise is nice, I think, but rain definitely wins out. I can hardly think of anything that encourages better sleeping than a slow, steady rain (as opposed to a raging thunderstorm). Rain also seems melancholy to me at times.
Tonight the rain is pelting rooftops There is no fire to melt the coldGood night.
I'm straining to hear a human whisper
And I'm painting images on the soft stone — Melting Alone, Sixpence None the Richer.
This Week
Will probably be very busy, but after that, I should have a bit more tranquil schedule for awhile. That's a nice thought.
Continuing the War on Spam
I implemented several spam blacklists today. Take a look at them (and the statistics of their filtering abilities thus far) over here on the main ServerForest site. The SPAM/Success ration is off at the moment since the successes include spam prior to the filter implementation today (the log goes back several days), but that will correct itself in the next few days. If this kind of thing interests you, check back, those stats are updated every hour, five minutes after the hour.
Also, if you have suggestions of other blacklists I should include, or a complaint about the accuracy of any I've already included, please let me know in the comments. Thanks!
As an aside, if you are presently a ServerForest customer, and you did not receive a notice with three important news items tonight, please let me know and I will send you a new copy.
The iPod vs. the iRiver ihp-120
Firewire connectivity. It's hard to find a player with this, and as always, Firewire devices cost more. But, that “more” equates to faster download/upload speeds. Firewire 400, despite being burst-able “only to 400 MB/s” instead of 480 MB/s like USB Hi-Speed, can sustain much higher speeds, to the tune of 33-70% faster transfers. Since these little puppies are nice external storage mediums for any type of file, the Firewire 400 speed seems advantageous to me. Transferring songs is blazingly fast — an average of one second per song.
Elegant simplicity. This has always been Apple's “thing.” Look at the two players' fronts. The iRiver's controller protrudes from the front and looks rather counterintuitive from what I can see. The iPod's clickwheel is flush with the surface of the iPod so that it won't catch on anything and is extremely simple: slide your finger up (like on a touchpad) to move up, slide down to move down. Click on the side that has the function you want if you want to play, go to the menu, etc. I'd note what C|Net's James Kim said about the interface and control between the two players (note, the ihp-120 is a year older than the present iPod so the whole review is based on the 3G iPod). “We found the multidirectional joystick control on the front easy enough to use for navigating the deep menu structure, but compared to the Apple iPod's scrollwheel, it makes going through long lists of songs a tedious chore.” I'd also note that the iRiver is laden with buttons on the side, whereas the iPod only has three buttons/switches: the clickwheel, the center button and the hold switch on top (to disable the buttons when not in use).
Same goes for the software… no one wants to hassle with complicated software when your out and about and want to listen to music. The iPod software is the simplest I've seen, but still does everything you'll likely want to do. It has multiple On-The-Go playlists that you can create using only the iPod, you can rate songs while they are playing and then the shuffle function will play your favorites more frequently, you can play Audible.com Audio Books (including some free ones) and much more. Simplicity doesn't mean it lacks miscellaneous features — it still has a place to read notes you've placed on the device, a calendar, contacts, three little games, a music game (where you try to identify short clips from your collection) and so on. Simplicity means everything “just works.” It even has touches like automatic pausing if you remove your headphones.
Accessories. Since the iPod outsells its competitors by about 3:1 (if not more) in the hard disk unit arena, if you want accessories, you'll have a lot easier time finding them with an iPod. Want a dock with speakers built into it? You can get one. Not satisfied with just any speakers? Get the iPod-exclusive Bose SoundDock. Want to store digital photos on your player during a long trip? Choose from adding a memory card reader or a USB port that will download photos straight from your camera. New cars (Minis and BMW's so far, but I expect more affordable fare in the future) now come with iPod support, new car stereos as well… Need a case? Choose from dozens of models that fit every need. With hp now support iPods, expect even more stuff to be available.
Software. Now this doesn't matter as much under GNU/Linux (although once CodeWeavers finishes its work on iTunes support it will)… the iPod/iTunes combination is far more elegant than any other I've seen. Auto-sync on docking (including, on Macs, auto-sync of contacts, calendar, etc.), easy organization tools, smart playlists that add music automatically based on select criteria, etc. As I understand it, the ihp-120 uses drag-and-drop manual uploading instead and requires you to manually run a playlist updater afterward if you want your selection menus to have your music in them.
Both iTunes and the iPod support Apple Lossless, which gives a completely lossless encoding that is 50% smaller than normal. Both support Apple Advanced Codec (AAC), the MPEG-4 based open standard format that produces file sizes dramatically smaller than Ogg that also sound better.
iPod is also the only player with a cross-platform music store for when you only want to buy one song (for instance, I bought the Michael W. Smith single “Healing Rain” two months before anyone not using iTMS could get it). iTMS music can go on five computers, be burnt in the same order 10 times (and burnt in different orders unlimited times) and go on unlimited iPods. At first I never thought I'd use iTMS, but over the last year and a half of its existence, I've found it useful numerous times. Will I buy a whole album through it? Not likely, but for individual tracks its great. As an aside, by purchasing an iPod your going with the only major player that does not work with Windows Media-based online music stores — yet, you are getting the only player that works with the world's most popular online music store. Therefore, it is a win-win situation: (1) the record labels cannot be content to work merely with Microsoft and its partners and (2) you aren't hurting yourself by choosing the iTMS compatible player, you are getting access to the online music store with the most tracks.
All this, plus a similar battery life as the iRiver (only more efficiently, since the AAC format requires less hard drive accesses, since the files are smaller — it also supports MP3), in the new 4G iPods (that's any iPod with a clickwheel). According to C|Net's tests, the same music player reviewer gave the iPod a 9 to iRiver's 8.7 and so on — despite the fact that the iRiver came out nearly a year before the 4G iPod and therefore should have had an easier time obtaining that “9.”
Aestitics. Sure, looks don't make a good player, but if your stuck around this thing all the time, its nice if you like the look. I've always been someone who appreciated simple, clean industrial design: the exact thing you get with the iPod.
Overall. I think it all comes down to what you plan to use it for. Some people will want a player with an FM tuner, on the other hand, if you are like me, the only radio you listen to (other than at Christmas) is AM talk radio — 50,000 watts of Rush Limbaugh, yeeeeaaa! —-so an FM tuner is just something else that can end up breaking on me. Others will want to be able to record sound, but I already have a PDA and a cell phone that do that (and Belkin makes a recording accessory for the iPod). On the other hand, the features I do want, such as an easy to use interface, sleek (and non-mechanical) control mechanism and iTMS support are available almost exclusively with the iPod.
World English Bible
A friend of mine did not know where he could find WEB on the web, so I here are a few good sources for him:
- World English Bible Official Site — This is where you'll find the latest version of WEB. Most of WEB has now been human edited to bring it up to the latest English, and the rest has been edited by computer. You can read it online here.
- CrossWire Bible Society — You can download the free SWORD Bible Study tool for your type of computer and enjoy the WEB and dozens of other translations, commentaries and resources here. I personally use MacSword, but I can attest to the quality of the Windows and GNU/Linux SWORD variants as well. I have 91 different modules in MacSword in three languages (English, Greek and Hebrew — but those aren't the only ones available)!
SWORD (including WEB) also is available online from this site, thanks to the cooperation of CrossWire, the American BIble Society and the Society for Bible Literature.
What's your favorite translation? Do you access it online? On your computer (offline)? In print? I switch between each of these, but I still use a paper Bible the most, I suppose. Leave your thoughts in the comments.
Tomorrow...
…I will rise out of the ashes of too many pages of papers like a Phoenix, err… Firebird, err… Firefox! That's it, like a Firefox!
Request for Comments: Spam Blocking
The spam situation is getting worse. Thousands of spams now find their way into the mailboxes on my server each and every day. Each client of mine receives SpamAssassin, a tool that helps filter those messages out of the main inbox, but the messages keep coming. Bandwidth is still wasted and spammers realize that the messages are being delivered (at least, by most appearances).
I'm thinking about adding SMTP-level filtering that would follow blacklists and block mail accordingly from known spammers. Presuming I'd do this, I'd try to go with the list(s) that seemed to have the least amount of false positives. However, anytime one uses a blacklist some legitimate traffic may be blocked.
Now, some of you who read my blog are hosted by ServerForest, at least a few others have inquired about my services and virtually all of you have some kind of web hosting account. Here's the question: does you present server (if you aren't on my server) use blacklisting and if so, how do you like it? If you aren't presently on a server with blacklisting, do you wish you were? Would you object to being on one with blacklisting? Would it change your view positively/negatively concerning ServerForest if we used blacklists?
Sorry to use y'all as a focus group, but I figured I should confront this issue, and I knew I'd get some good opinions on my blog. I've actually received a request from one client to implement this, and I was sort of thinking about it anyway.
In other news, I need to implement a password protected section to this blog. There are some interesting server security-related things I'd like to post about, but for the obvious reasons, it is advantageous not to post such publicly. Maybe I'll do that in a few weeks.
The Commercial
“Step right up and order now,”
Cried he with the miracle cleaner on tee-vee.
“It'll clean off anything, I'll show you how.”“I was as dumb as a cow,
No longer, thanks to this fruit - you see?
Step right up and order now.But she protested, “we aren't to touch this bough,
It would be a sin, that's key!”
“It'll clean off anything, I'll show you how.”“Sin,” laughed he, “just use this, I vow;
Spotless and smarter you'll be.
Step right up and order now.So she, and he too, ate the chow.
What a trick, but the trick's on thou,
They saw the sale 'twas faulty.
“It'll clean off anything, I'll show you how.”
Never listen when they say slyly
“Step right up and order now,
It'll clean off anything, I'll show you how.
Well, this is a bit more substantial than my haiku from last night, although whether it is any good is an entirely different question. I actually thought it up while writing Haiku II last night, but I was too tired to write it out at that point. I guess this could be called a metaphysical poem, although Donne need not worry that I will be taking his place any time soon.
