...we join the story in progress...Stephen has won the bidding on a 35 foot long mobile classroom that was up for sale on eBay, allegedly built in 1987, supposedly equipped with a 460 Ford engine , and less than 1800 miles on the clock. He plans to use it as an office in New York but first has to get the thing from Ohio to Florida where he will equip it...
Landed late in Columbus. Met by anxious Pastor Dan who drove me to the church parking lot in Urbana where the thing has been sitting. Looked it over best I could in the intermittent rain. Dan was keen to get to the Friday night high school football game that was in progress nearby [apparently attended by a huge crowd--cheers and band noise could easily be heard several miles away--the type of high school game where the ball is dropped from a helicopter].
I handed over a banker's check and...
Skybus Delivers: Cheap seats and relatively few hassles
Looking for the quickest and cheapest way to get from St. Augustine, Florida, to Columbus, Ohio? Skybus is answer. Could also be the answer if you are going between any two of these places:
Ten seats on every flight are sold for only $10. The rest cost more as plane fills up. I tried them out for the first time on Friday, to make the trip from Florida to Ohio to collect the Great White Office. I paid $90 including all fees, taxes, government surcharges, etc. That was at least $40 less than any other commercial flight I could find from Jacksonville, and this plane left from St Johns County airport just 3 miles and a cheap cab ride from my house, as opposed to 50 minutes and a $45 fare to JAX. To book...
Ten seats on every flight are sold for only $10. The rest cost more as plane fills up. I tried them out for the first time on Friday, to make the trip from Florida to Ohio to collect the Great White Office. I paid $90 including all fees, taxes, government surcharges, etc. That was at least $40 less than any other commercial flight I could find from Jacksonville, and this plane left from St Johns County airport just 3 miles and a cheap cab ride from my house, as opposed to 50 minutes and a $45 fare to JAX. To book...
The [Great White Mobile] Office Saga: An idea, an auction, a leap of faith
Once upon a time we lived in Florida and it was good. In fact, the living in Florida still is good. But a few years ago we found a magic valley in the North, in a state called New York, a hidden place peopled by cool folk and planted with many crops and trees. We bought a house on a hill there and it was good to visit. Then we thought, wouldn't it be nice to live here most of the time?
But there are some things lacking in our house on the hill, and I'm not just talking about no fibre optic net connection. There is no office space for my office stuff. There is a single car garage that would make a nice office but that would take a fair amount of professional contract work to convert, work I might not be there to oversee. So I thought, what about those offices they have on construction sites? And that's how we got into this...![The [Great White] Mobile Office](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_sa5xWxyoUHxpZecXPt4iZGLTccBMQXyjwm_hs3tSXdEGNdz87VAdutuEApKwy0D9FF9f_FNiviqDsWhB0-s0OgB6sBl7YSee64=s0-d "The [Great White] Mobile Office")
But there are some things lacking in our house on the hill, and I'm not just talking about no fibre optic net connection. There is no office space for my office stuff. There is a single car garage that would make a nice office but that would take a fair amount of professional contract work to convert, work I might not be there to oversee. So I thought, what about those offices they have on construction sites? And that's how we got into this...
UK Land Registry Axes Online Deeds
Good example of the downside of accessibility as UK Land Registry ends online access to deeds. Relates to something I long ago term the J. J. Gittes Dilemma, after the 1930s Los Angeles private detective immortalized by Jack Nicholson in the 1974 classic "Chinatown." It takes Jake Gittes several days and several beatings to uncover a land fraud which would--arguably--take just a few hours or even minutes to uncover on the Internet today. On the other hand, the expansion of freedom of access to 'public' records
One could argue, as I am inclined to do, that the need to access some records in person, or in writing, or through licensed channels, is not an undue hindrance to access. I have yet to find a single state official who can justify making details of my property ownership in Florida available to anyone, in any country, at any time, for any reason, with no fee, process of authorization, or record of access, which is the current state of affairs.
(I'm not even sure there are any state officials who realize that a. this is the state of affairs they have created and b. it is a problem.)
One could argue, as I am inclined to do, that the need to access some records in person, or in writing, or through licensed channels, is not an undue hindrance to access. I have yet to find a single state official who can justify making details of my property ownership in Florida available to anyone, in any country, at any time, for any reason, with no fee, process of authorization, or record of access, which is the current state of affairs.
(I'm not even sure there are any state officials who realize that a. this is the state of affairs they have created and b. it is a problem.)
The Rose & Kettle: A great place to hang out
There are plenty of unique watering holes and eateries in the Cooperstown - Cherry Valley area, but perhaps none quite a special as the Rose and Kettle. Where else can you find great food, prepared by a rock star chef, served by an award-winning author, all to the sound of local musicians?(On the left is Cherry-Valley singer Mike Hand performing with Cherry-Valley guitarist Carl Waldman.)
Clem Coleman works wonders in the kitchen (local grown treats like: Rosebrook Elk boneless eye o' the round roast with herb bread crumbs au jus; Gaia's Breath Farm organic pork shoulder roast cooked in Coca Cola, and the legendary Hanger Steak).
Front of house, Clem's wife Dana Spiotta keeps things welcoming and friendly (you'd never guess she has several novels under her belt, one of which won the 2006 National Book Award for fiction).
Spend an evening at the Rose and Kettle and you'll understand why it was voted Metroland's "Best Restaurant Worth a Drive" in 2007. Like many local institutions, the Roe and Kettle has fluctuating opening times, so to make sure you are not disappointed, check the blog before dropping by.
Blonde Faith: Why it's good to be able to trust an author
Just finished reading Walter Mosley's latest, Blonde Faith, and I wish I hadn't--finished that is. There are some authors who are so dependably good you just wish they'd write as fast as you can read, so you'd never be without one of their books. Almost all of my fiction reading is done just before I go to sleep and I look forward to that time as a reward for a hard day's work. If I don't have a dependable author to turn to, I get cranky and have a hard time falling asleep.
For me, Walter Mosley is one of the most dependable. Even though he has tried some very different genres over the years, I have enjoyed them all, from the spacey afro-youth novel "47" through the gritty tales of Socrates Fortlow to the darkness of "The Man in the Basement." For sheer enjoyment, the Paris Minton and Easy Rawlins series are the best and this is where Blonde Faith fits in. I don't want to give anything away, but this one could be a shocker for Easy fans. If you have not read any of the others in the series, don't start here, go for Devil in a Blue Dress. In fact, what I recommend--and literary purists are going to cringe at this--is first watch the movie of Devil in a Blue Dress then read the book. Why? Because then you will see Easy as Denzel Washington when you make your way through the rest of the series, and that really worked for me. Denzel Washington has the same wry smile of an angry soul that is so often an Easy's face.
And remember, with any Easy Rawlins novel you not only get night after night of suspense and intrigue and illicit sex, you also get a first rate education in what it felt like to grow up black in America in the forties and fifties (and probably the sixties through the nineties as well).
For me, Walter Mosley is one of the most dependable. Even though he has tried some very different genres over the years, I have enjoyed them all, from the spacey afro-youth novel "47" through the gritty tales of Socrates Fortlow to the darkness of "The Man in the Basement." For sheer enjoyment, the Paris Minton and Easy Rawlins series are the best and this is where Blonde Faith fits in. I don't want to give anything away, but this one could be a shocker for Easy fans. If you have not read any of the others in the series, don't start here, go for Devil in a Blue Dress. In fact, what I recommend--and literary purists are going to cringe at this--is first watch the movie of Devil in a Blue Dress then read the book. Why? Because then you will see Easy as Denzel Washington when you make your way through the rest of the series, and that really worked for me. Denzel Washington has the same wry smile of an angry soul that is so often an Easy's face.
And remember, with any Easy Rawlins novel you not only get night after night of suspense and intrigue and illicit sex, you also get a first rate education in what it felt like to grow up black in America in the forties and fifties (and probably the sixties through the nineties as well).
Brother Inkjet Issue Now on Blip.TV
Okay, finally found time to edit the video I make of the "empty" Brother ink cartridge and host it at blip.tv. Using a good digital kitchen scale it looks like at least 10% of the ink remains in the cartridge after the printer declares "cartridge empty" and refuses to print.
What Linguistic Neck?
In my last post I mentioned sticking my linguistic neck out. Then someone said "What linguistic neck?" Here's the rap:
Politics and Technology: Seldom a good match
People who were appalled to hear the Internet described as a system of tubes by the man in congress charged with overseeing said tubes may take some comfort in the fact that said man, Republican Senator Ted Stevens, is currently under investigation for corruption. But Democrats cannot claim to be great technologists either.
Consider the mess that politics is making of technology in the Democratic state of New York. Many Americans don't realize that New York state, when considered in terms of land use, is largely a rural state. In other words, most of the state is countryside, dotted with farms and populated at low densities. Many of these rural communities struggle to provide enough jobs at sufficient salary levels to prevent young people from moving away. There is considerable economic blight.
Technologists may look at this situation and see a chance for technology to come to the rescue.
Let's install broadband Internet access so higher paying tech jobs can be located in rural communities and the agricultural sector can reap the productivity benefits that come from Web 2.0 services. Great idea. Proven to work in numerous places around the world. Except that the free market does not like providing capital intensive technology to rural areas. The only reason that rural communities in America have phone services is a Federal program of subsidy to enable "Universal Service" (financed by a small charge on your monthly phone bill). But there is strong resistant among broadband providers (now mainly phone companies) to expanding that program by defining broadband as essential. See Universal Service.
But surely liberal New York state could do something about this, offer subsidies, lobby for access to FUS funds. But no. The state politicians are opposed to expanding FUS to cover broadband because a. New York might be a net loser of FUS funds and b. FUS broadband would be federal, available in all states, not just New York and "thus deprive New York of any advantages in might gain from having a state scheme to increase rural broadband access."
Now, are you ready for a big cynical dose of irony? There is no state scheme to increase rural broadband access. Why? Could it be because state officials and politicos have been feeding at the trough of the big telcos, companies that can't be bothered to serve those very communities through which they route their trunk lines to connect big cities, where there are large pools of customers?
One ironic twist in the teclo lobbying fandango is that they have been selling politicians [who think the Internet is a series of pipes, remember] on satellite Internet service as a way to fill the gap for rural areas. How altruistic is that? Let rural users eat broadband via satellite, hence there is no need for use to wire them. Except satellite is NOT competitive with wired broadband. So it is not altruistic at all. Telcos pushing satellite in rural areas is not a conflict of interest because satellite is a dead-end for serious broadband.
Why? Two words. Latency and cap. Satellite Internet users have a bandwidth cap. Even if you pay Hughes Net $199 per month they won't give you more than 450 megabytes of bandwidth per day. If you watch streaming video over broadband you can easily consume 60 megabytes an hour. Imagine a family of four. They each could watch a few hours of streaming video in a day. Boom, there goes your limit. And the consequences are dire if you exceed that limit. You are throttled back to a plain old dial-up pace of connectivity for the next 20 to 24 hours. And don't think this is just about unfairness to YouTube addicts. These days we get clients asking use to download hundreds of megabytes of code and documentation per day.
Then there is the latency. It renders VPN use almost impossible. And VPN is the single most important technology for enabling telecommuting from rural areas!
And we haven't even talked about what happens when you get bad weather (you get bad connections, dropped packets, total loss of connectivity, snail pace response times). Then there So, satellite is amazing technology, no doubt about that, but is not at all comparable to wired broadband.
So, what are rural users to do? I expect that some of them will organize and lobby. Others will simply build their own alternatives and, hopefully, deprive the telcos of revenue. If you light up the valley with WiFi, for example, you could steal a bunch of revenue from cell and land line providers. Maybe then those land line owners will be more appreciative of the folk of who allow them to run their fibre through their valley without bothering to give the locals a taste.
Consider the mess that politics is making of technology in the Democratic state of New York. Many Americans don't realize that New York state, when considered in terms of land use, is largely a rural state. In other words, most of the state is countryside, dotted with farms and populated at low densities. Many of these rural communities struggle to provide enough jobs at sufficient salary levels to prevent young people from moving away. There is considerable economic blight.
Technologists may look at this situation and see a chance for technology to come to the rescue.
Let's install broadband Internet access so higher paying tech jobs can be located in rural communities and the agricultural sector can reap the productivity benefits that come from Web 2.0 services. Great idea. Proven to work in numerous places around the world. Except that the free market does not like providing capital intensive technology to rural areas. The only reason that rural communities in America have phone services is a Federal program of subsidy to enable "Universal Service" (financed by a small charge on your monthly phone bill). But there is strong resistant among broadband providers (now mainly phone companies) to expanding that program by defining broadband as essential. See Universal Service.
But surely liberal New York state could do something about this, offer subsidies, lobby for access to FUS funds. But no. The state politicians are opposed to expanding FUS to cover broadband because a. New York might be a net loser of FUS funds and b. FUS broadband would be federal, available in all states, not just New York and "thus deprive New York of any advantages in might gain from having a state scheme to increase rural broadband access."
Now, are you ready for a big cynical dose of irony? There is no state scheme to increase rural broadband access. Why? Could it be because state officials and politicos have been feeding at the trough of the big telcos, companies that can't be bothered to serve those very communities through which they route their trunk lines to connect big cities, where there are large pools of customers?
One ironic twist in the teclo lobbying fandango is that they have been selling politicians [who think the Internet is a series of pipes, remember] on satellite Internet service as a way to fill the gap for rural areas. How altruistic is that? Let rural users eat broadband via satellite, hence there is no need for use to wire them. Except satellite is NOT competitive with wired broadband. So it is not altruistic at all. Telcos pushing satellite in rural areas is not a conflict of interest because satellite is a dead-end for serious broadband.
Why? Two words. Latency and cap. Satellite Internet users have a bandwidth cap. Even if you pay Hughes Net $199 per month they won't give you more than 450 megabytes of bandwidth per day. If you watch streaming video over broadband you can easily consume 60 megabytes an hour. Imagine a family of four. They each could watch a few hours of streaming video in a day. Boom, there goes your limit. And the consequences are dire if you exceed that limit. You are throttled back to a plain old dial-up pace of connectivity for the next 20 to 24 hours. And don't think this is just about unfairness to YouTube addicts. These days we get clients asking use to download hundreds of megabytes of code and documentation per day.
Then there is the latency. It renders VPN use almost impossible. And VPN is the single most important technology for enabling telecommuting from rural areas!
And we haven't even talked about what happens when you get bad weather (you get bad connections, dropped packets, total loss of connectivity, snail pace response times). Then there So, satellite is amazing technology, no doubt about that, but is not at all comparable to wired broadband.
So, what are rural users to do? I expect that some of them will organize and lobby. Others will simply build their own alternatives and, hopefully, deprive the telcos of revenue. If you light up the valley with WiFi, for example, you could steal a bunch of revenue from cell and land line providers. Maybe then those land line owners will be more appreciative of the folk of who allow them to run their fibre through their valley without bothering to give the locals a taste.
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