CF2 TechNotes Blog » General computing

A Podcast Patent

curtis_franklin — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 13:15:08 +0000

In a piece on NewTeeVee, they announce that VoloMedia has been awarded a patent on podcasting. I’m not a lawyer, and I haven’t read the patent, but the information in the NewTeeVee piece they list key points, and it looks like most podcasts are covered. It’s not at all obvious what this will do to the world of podcasting, though VoloMedia says they won’t be going after individual podcasters. Just who will they be going after, then? I suppose we’ll all have to wait until a newer episode to find out…

iPhone Apps? I Got ‘Em

curtis_franklin — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 22:16:02 +0000

The great thing (and the terrible thing) about the iPhone is that it gives me the chance to play with a bunch of new applications. I’ve got to admit that most of the ones I’ve been using are for putting information up on the web — iBlogger (from the same people who wrote Ecto, the tool I use to blog from my desktop), Pixelpipe (for sending photos from my iPhone to Flickr), Facebook (yeah), and TweetDeck (the same platform I use for Tweeting from my desktop). With these, I can do much of my daily work from the phone if I can’t put my hands on my laptop to make things happen.

I’ve also grabbed a couple of things that help me keep information moving between the iPhone and the Macbook Pro. Evernote is a wonderful cloud application for keeping notes and information available regardless of where you are, and Bento is a super little database that I use for information that’s a bit more structured — my health info and notes on tutoring sessions, for example.

All in all, I’m really pleased with the iPhone — it’s one of the few tech purchases of the last few years that hasn’t carried some regret with it. Now, if I can start keeping up with my Microsoft Office docs on the phone, I’ll be set…

More on That Balance Business

curtis_franklin — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 01:13:11 +0000

A month — wow. How the time does fly. I’ve been busy, but it’s time to get back to regular posting here.

Last week, I had the opportunity to see my town with fresh eyes. We participated in the Scott Kelby Worldwide Photo Walk 2009 here in Gainesville, Florida. Carol and I each took a bunch of photos, and have been working with them in order to get the pool down to the two we’ll submit for possible prizes. The rest of mine are available on Flickr, as are Carol’s It was really great meeting new people and getting together after the walk for pizza — it’s amazing how few people we really know here after a dozen years of residence.

What kind of photos did I take? Here are two or three of my favorites…

I love the “art” aspect of the sign in the window. Simple, but fun.

I “popped” the color a bit on this, but really enjoyed the depth of the greens in the shot. Finally…

This shot just worked for me…nice color, and good light-to-dark contrast.

Hundreds of photographers took thousands of photos around the world — check out some of the groups at the web site, or on Flickr!

Rehab — Until the Podcast

curtis_franklin — Sat, 30 May 2009 01:05:32 +0000

My next podcast is going to be about cardiac rehab. To be honest, I’ve just been so busy with work and life that I haven’t had the time to put the episode together. To tide us over until then, I decided to post some of the photos Carol took of me during one of my early rehab sessions.

In general, I go to rehab three times a week, spending about an hour and a half there each time. While there, I’ll spend about fifty minutes doing aerobic exercise (stationary bike, NuStep, treadmill, and arm machine) and twenty minutes or so lifting weights. During the whole time, I’ll have a heart monitor attached so the nurses can keep tabs on my heart activity. So far, I seem to be handling everything well — at least, that’s what the nurses tell me.

Speaking of nurses, Angela is great at offering encouragement and keeping the atmosphere upbeat — I haven’t had experience with rehab nurses who do it any other way, but the team at North Florida is great. Here is Angela getting me set up on my least-favorite machine, the arm cycle.

That machine takes some work, and I seem to spend a lot of time concentrating and looking quite serious while I’m turning the hand cranks.

Of course, I have to work my legs, too, and the stationary bike is good for that. At the half-way mark on my time, I let the nurses know and they check my blood pressure. So far everything is looking good — my BP goes up (indicating my heart is working) but not too much, and when they check it one last time before I leave it tends to be slightly lower than when I came in. Today’s check out BP? 100 over 58. Not too bad.

The part that I’ve really been looking forward to is weight-training. I didn’t realize, though, just how weakened I’d become. The photos below show me working with 7-pound dumbs, and by the end of a dozen reps I was ready to put them down. I’m working my way up in both weight and reps, but it’s going to be a while before I’m pushing any sort of serious iron.

I do several exercises including front arm extensions…

and good ‘ol arm curls.

By the time I finish with the routine, I’m ready to sit for a little while, but at least I’m up and moving, getting some exercise and feeling better. I’m to the point of truly looking forward to September, when I get some numbers back on my heart function. I feel like they’ll be good numbers, but the confirmation will be nice.

Podcast to come, but work for revenue comes first, so look for the episode sometime next week.

Back in the Freelance Saddle…

curtis_franklin — Sat, 30 May 2009 00:39:07 +0000

The first articles of my renewed freelance career are up at InfoWorld. In fairness, the bulk of the work for these was done while I was on staff, but it’s nice to see them published, especially since my friend and collaborator Brian Chee spent such an incredible amount of time working on the testing procedures and programming. We’re proud of the results, and look forward to continuing the testing regimen with new products in the near future.

The project was a review of universal threat managers (UTMs) appropriate for branch-office deployment. UTMs are like firewalls on steroids, responding to and protecting against a much wider variety of threats than can be handled by the classic firewall.

The review is in multiple parts. First we introduce the cast of UTMs, then describe the testing regimen we developed for UTMs. Next, we move on to a look at the test equipment from Ixia and Mu Dynamics that we used to run the tests. Finally we come to the UTMs themselves, with separate write-ups on the products from Astaro, SonicWall, WatchGuard, and ZyXel. Who won? Well, you’ll just have to go read the review to find out, now. Enjoy!

A Busy Blogging Time

curtis_franklin — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 04:12:36 +0000

I’ve been busy blogging over at the Inside Interop site, and there’s a lot more activity to come. We’re working on various social networking approaches to building the Interop community, and I’ll be writing about those here very soon.

I’ll also be starting a new podcast series here — the subject is how I’ve learned about working with cardiac issues. The impetus behind the series is simple — it’s for a class at UF — but I hope that folks will enjoy the way the series goes together. I’m using it as an opportunity to try some new blog capabilities, so it should be an adventure all around.

While we’re waiting for those, feel free to head over to Inside Interop to check out my posts on network infrastructure, keynote addresses, and cloud computing. There’s more to come, soon…

A First Look at Clouds

curtis_franklin — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 18:26:04 +0000

No, not the clouds in the sky, but cloud computing. It’s a broad category, with folks meaning everything from Google Mail to widely-distributed applications (think SETI at Home) when they talk about cloud applications. I just wrote a blog entry at InfoWorld on the question of what happens when your cloud fails. I’m going to be looking deeply at cloud computing this fall — you’ll hear more about why in an upcoming post.

More Words and Pictures

curtis_franklin — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 06:33:07 +0000

Audio slide shows (or SoundSlides) are wonderful ways to tell a story — they are, in fact, one of the best tools I’ve found in the last year in school. At InfoWorld, we’ve put up another SoundSlide on the Pimp Your Datacenter project. This one was a great collaborative effort, with photos from several contributors, narration by Brian Chee, and production, well, by me.

Of course, now I have to go out and buy a new copy of the software for the Mac, but that’s a small price to pay. The functionality of the Sound Slide software is superb and the Mac is the best platform I’ve used in years. The combination — well, I’m looking forward to seeing how much I can do with it this year.

InfoWorld Projects — The last datacenter article

curtis_franklin — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 02:58:55 +0000

OK, so I’ll admit that being able to work in Honolulu is a very cool thing. I’ve been working on reviews and project with Brian Chee, director of the Advanced Network Computing Lab (ANCL) for nearly a decade and I remain in awe of his technical abilities. The fact that he’s also a great friend makes working out here even more productive than normal technology field trips.

On this trip, we’re working on firewalls. When I was here in March, we were finishing the work for the InfoWorld Pimp Your Datacenter article. We took some of the photos and had Brian narrate them into a couple of slide presentations. Here’s the presentation on the air-conditioning installation — I’ll have the electrical installation show up soon.

Blogging in the Dark

curtis_franklin — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 07:52:34 +0000

It’s been a while since I’ve sat in a computer lab well into the night. We’re deep into a big test, things are working as we’d hoped, and very talented engineers are looking deep into data packets in an attempt to coax expensive hardware into doing as its told. My role in all this is peripheral; I take notes, ask questions, and nod thoughtfully at appropriate times. I’m a reasonably knowledgeable guy when it comes to computers and networks, but the folks in the lab tonight are playing well over my head.

I walked outside a little while ago and remembered one of the facts of late-night work: the air feels different in the early morning. Years ago, when I worked the third shift at a steel pipe mill, I enjoyed going out to inspect rail cars at 3:00 AM. No matter how hot the day had been (and Birmingham, Alabama in July can be very hot, indeed), the early-morning air was soft and gently warm against the skin. Walking out in the orange-yellow glow of the sodium lights, I walked through velvet-soft air to the rail cars stacked high with lengths of seamless steel pipe. There’s an excitement to working when most of the world is asleep, and it almost makes working through the night worthwhile.

There’s a considerable difference between the view tonight and the view way back then. The Honolulu skyline is mottled light and dark with offices and apartments occupied and bright, or empty and dark. Thirty years ago, most offices left the lights on all night long; in places like New York City, it was as though no one ever slept. That’s not to say that Honolulu is dark tonight — the light is still well above the baby turtle confusion level, and the city has an energetic hum, but it’s obvious that people have started thinking about turning off lights when the room is empty. It’s a small thing in the overall scheme of things, but it shows that office managers and homeowners are thinking about energy and efficiency at least as much as the high-profile eco-celebrities who are always private-jetting off to lecture the less fortunate on the evils of consumption.

I’m typing this on ecto, and like most of the Mac software I’ve tried, it works. That may seem like damning with faint praise, but after more than a year of wrestling with Vista operational software is a blessing. The nifty design of the Mac hardware, while nice, is not a compelling issue for me. Software that works when I want it to work is. I’m sure I’ll be disappointed down the line, but for now I’m a happy camper. We’ll see if the feeling holds when I come back to the lab in the morning.