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Top to Bottom

Just came across this .sig in someone’s email:

A: Yes.
| Q: Are you sure?
| | A: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation.
| | | Q: Why is top posting frowned upon?

Geeky, but reminded me of a conversation I had with a friend a while ago – he was the first programmer-type I had encountered who actually advocated top-posting comments in email threads. Why? Because most email conversations are very short, and the information you want should be the most visible. With top-posting, you can usually see the info you need in your mail client’s preview pane, without having to open and scroll through the message. Sort of for the same reason that virtually all weblogs post most recent info at the top, rather than in true chronological order. He was right — top-posting does make most email conversation more fluid. The system backfires when:

A) The two parties don’t agree on a protocol, and the thread wanders up and down the page willy nilly.

B) A brief top-posting thread evolves into a longer thread, with the need to respond to individual bits rather than to the message as a whole. In this case, there is sometimes an awkward transition as the posting order turns itself inside out.

I’m a switch-hitter on this one, and go both ways depending on message content and mood. Anyone out there adamantly top or bottom? (Cue the sub-dom jokes :)

Music: Stereolab :: Seeperbold
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Coulda Been a Contender

Miles Brando Icon Miles was sick recently, voice went hoarse, started talking like Marlon Brando in “On the Waterfront.” In fact, so much so that we couldn’t help ourselves from encouraging him to learn a couple of lines from that famous movie.

This actually made for a nice opportunity to do quality/size comparisons between h.263 and the new h.264 codec in QuickTime 7. With default settings, the h.264 exports definitely looked much better, but also had larger file sizes. But by twitching the quality slider from High to Medium, the file size was chopped dramatically, resulting in simultaneous higher quality and smaller files.

h.264 version (requires QuickTime 7)
h.263 version (everyone else)

Music: 20 Minute Loop :: Aeroflot
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Rita and EV1

While Birdhouse’s datacenter is in Texas, far from the reach of any West-coast earthquake disaster, it’s now sitting in the direct path of Hurricane Rita. Fortunately, EV1 sounds very well prepared:

As an extra precaution, we have even sourced an additional rental generator. While this unit would not be needed for a brief outage, if we were to experience a loss of power lasting several days, we would need to perform normal maintenance on our generators, and this would give us a generator to run while that maintenance is taking place. All total, we have in excess of 10,000 gallons of fuel on site. We have guaranteed contracts for fuel delivery and two fuel depots are located within 2 miles of our facility.

Of course, all of that fuel won’t help much if the whole facility is ripped from its foundations… Many EV1 employees are heading out to be with families, but core staff is planning to weather the storm in the datacenter. Now that’s dedication.

Music: Brian Eno and Jah Wobble :: Left Where It Fell
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Glued to the Set

Mortality meets technology: Caught a few minutes Wed. night of the emergency landing of the JetBlue airliner with twisted landing gear. Discovered this morning that those nifty TV screens in the back of every JetBlue seat came in extra-handy for the passengers, as a means to watch their own imminent deaths on live TV. Glued to the set for the stunning conclusion of TV’s ultimate reality suspense drama. Trying to imagine whether I would have watched if I had been on the plane. It would be hard not to, but like to hope I’d put my mind somewhere more introspective in such a moment. Can only imagine that the spectacle contributed to on-board emotional frenzy.

Music: Brian Eno :: Compact Forest Proposal, Condition 4
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checkmailquota

The cPanel account management system used by Birdhouse Hosting has proved to be very complete (though not without its glitches and surprises), and its tools have saved me a ton of work. It’s been nice to not have to write a script for every new piece of functionality needed. But was shocked recently to discover that cPanel doesn’t send alert messages to POP account holders when mailboxes are nearing quota. Started looking for something to fit the bill, didn’t find anything that did the job neatly, so wrote a shell script for cPanel systems.

checkmailquota loops through the home dirs and, for each home, loops through hosted domains. For each domain, loops through mailboxes, recording byte sizes. Compares these sizes to what’s listed in the quota file for that mailbox. If usage is within xx% of quota, sends a warning message to that mailbox. Also sends a summary of accounts near quota to postmaster.

It seems bizarre to me that a script like this, or equivalent functionality, isn’t built into cPanel (at version 10 no less!)

Music: Can :: Ethnological Forgery Series No. 7
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Misc. Notes on Cached Content

Analysis at WebProNews on the legality of Google’s Print for Libraries project, in which Google is intending to pick up where Project Gutenberg leaves off – not only reproducing full text of public domain works, but also excerpts of copyrighted material.

The entire text of books considered to be public domain and out of copyright will be scanned and made available online. For copyrighted material, the books will be scanned, and snippets will be made available structured around search terms with links to where the book can be checked out or purchased.

Continue reading “Misc. Notes on Cached Content”

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How to Write a Better Weblog

Very nice piece at A List Apart on techniques for writing a weblog people will actually read. Focuses on things you should do, rather than things you shouldn’t (why are viable suggestions so much more rare than lists of things to avoid?)

Anything makes a good subject, as long as you take your time and crystallize the details, tying them together and actually telling a story, rather than offering a simple list of facts. Do readers really want to know how miserable you are? Yes. But they’re going to want details, the precise odor of your room, why you haven’t showered in a week, or how exactly somebody broke your heart. At the same time, you don’t want to over–explain yourself. Understatement can be thunderous, or humorous, or heartbreaking. Or all three.

Music: Pram :: Things Left On The Pavement
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Disc vs. Disk

For the terminally curious, Apple has a knowledgebase article: What’s the difference between a “disc” and a “disk”?

Short story: Discs are optical, disks are magnetic. But you knew that already, right? And:

Although both discs and disks are circular, disks are usually sealed inside a metal or plastic casing (often, a disk and its enclosing mechanism are collectively known as a “hard drive”).

Absent from the article is any mention of how it came to pass that Apple gets to speak so authoritatively on the subject. Granted, this seems to be standard tech lore, but it’s weird to see the KB regarding itself as if a dictionary.

Music: Duke Ellington & John Coltrane :: In A Sentimental Mood
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Like Skis

The other morning Miles and I awoke to find cat puke on the floor. He promptly slipped in a pile and landed on his can, seemed absolutely delighted. “Daddy, I used the kitty cat throw-up like skis!”

Last week he popped up from his bed and ran into the bathroom saying something about a badger. I came in to help look for said mammal. “Daddy, we have a badger in our house, I saw it, it was in my room but then it went into the bathroom, but I didn’t think we had a badger, but now we do.”

Today he got a toy steam roller named Rolly (from Bob the Builder). Played with it all day, talked to it in the car on our way to the lake. When I was taking him out of the car, he told me, “Daddy, Rolly is my best friend!” So sweet, I thought. Three minutes later, we arrived at the shore of the lake. Without hesitation, Miles hucked Rolly as hard as he could out into the water, where he promptly sank to the bottom of the briney pond. So much for best friends (Rolly was later successfully rescued).

Music: Blo :: Chant To Mother Earth