Jamie Thingelstad

I had a busy day on election day with an 8am meeting at work. I was determined to get out and vote and I ended up being the 37th vote in my polling station. This is the line that formed right before the polls open.

Voting went smooth. I was leering at the scanner that read my votes after watching the Hacking Democracy documentary. The software that runs these machines is frightening, the documentary is worth a watch. If there was ever a problem that was well suited for the Internet, it’s voting!

Google released a new version of the Google Reader a couple of weeks ago and I’ve been using it for the last few days. I think that I’ve finally found a web-based RSS reader that I can live with now.

I’ve wanted to move my RSS reading to a web reader so that I can access it anywhere, particularly on a mobile device. Google Reader in it’s previous incarnations just didn’t hit it right to me. The significant redesign they did really hit the usability issues right on the head.

If your looking for something a bit more sophisticated, and mobile, than the RSS functions of Thunderbird check out Reader. I don’t think you’ll be dissapointed.

I attended my first Ruby Users of Minnesota (RUM) meeting tonight. I’ve wanted to go for a long time but the meetings seemed to always fall on days when I was typically out of town for business. It all worked out this time so I was excited to go. I’ve been on the mailing list for a long time and it’s a really good group of people.

Of particular note was my friend Dan presented a side-project he did using rex and racc (Ruby versions of lex and yacc) to create a parser and validator for math equations written in LaTeX on Road Sign Math. This was pretty cool. He hacked it up quickly and solved most of the hard problems. He got to the point so he can evaluate that 3 \times \sqrt{4} = 6 is a valid statement. It will be a nice thing to wrap into Road Sign Math 3.0 when the time is right.

I left the RUM meeting feeling a little scared though. I sat next to a kid named Chris who I can only imagine was dropped off by his Dad since I can’t imagine he was old enough to drive. He was obviously brilliant and immersed in all things Internet, Ruby, Mac and whatever else. Why scared? It’s so amazingly hard to stay on top of the things that you need to know in this world of computer geekdom. Anyway, I’m not going to dwell on that but instead continue to be involved in these sorts of activities that expose you to new thinking.

I have about a dozen of URL’s, notes and such to followup on from the meeting and am looking forward to the next one. (OmniGraffle Pro, parse tree, Gruff for Ruby, Nick Sieger, fuzz testing, Rinda)

Funny side note – I did a count of laptops in the room. 11 Mac laptops (mostly MacBook) including me (one of only 2 black ones) and a whopping 2 Wintel laptops. 🙂

I am a frequent “CrackBerry” user. That’s the slang term for a BlackBerry for those that are not “in the know”. In recent months though I’ve started to look angrily at my CrackBerry. I’m starting to get pain in my thumbs on a pretty regular basis.

Any of you that have seen my various computers know that I have an eye to ergonomics. I use a trackball instead of a mouse because it eases my wrists. I have a split keyboard so that I’m more comfortable. I had a mild bout with Carpal Tunnel Syndrome in the early 90’s that woke me up to these issues and I’ve taken them seriously ever since. I’ve not had any hand pain issues since then, until the BlackBerry entered the scene.

A quick search on Google for blackberry thumb pain results in dozens of articles on the topic. It’s obvious that there is a problem here. The thumb wasn’t intended to type! I’ve found recently that even spinning the scroll wheel up and down is a problem. I’ve resorted to reading the shortcut tips to reduce my keystrokes and simplify things. However, I think the real solution is to just use the thing less.

Thats the rub! The CrackBerry is named that for a reason – it’s addictive. On top of that, people at work have expectations that you have it with you. I’m going to manage it and pay close attention to the pain in my thumbs.

Right around 4 months ago Tammy and I spent the evening at our neighbors house with a really cool local artist named Erik Sletten. Our neighbors have several of his works and we were celebrating with them the arrival of two new ones. That night I got to do something I had never done before – flip through an artists sketchbook. I was flipping through Sletten’s sketches and as I turned the page in the middle a sketch caught my attention in a unique way. A couple of weeks passed and we decided to commission the work.

This last weekend we got to do another first. We joined Erik in his studio as he started to introduce color to our piece. It was a fun evening, and a unique opportunity to connect with him and the art. Tammy and I had mixed feelings about joining him while painting. As I told him, I want the painting he would paint, not the painting I would suggest him to paint. But Erik is a cool guy, and very chatty to boot, so it was a lot of fun.

Here is our painting being birthed in raw lines. I can’t wait to see it finished. For scale, the canvas is 5.5 feet square.

On the way back home from the Great Adventure we took a slight detour through Atlanta specificially to see the new Georgia Aquarium. This is the largest aquarium in the world, and after our visit I was very glad we took the detour. If you are in Atlanta, this is an absolute must see.

I’ve seen several aquariums and always enjoy them, however the Goergia Aquarium sets a new level that all others should aspire to. When you enter the aquarium you come into a space that is relatively dark and at one end there are two aquariums on either side of a relatively small door. The two aquariums have schools of fish swimming with the current toward the door. You join the fish and enter an amazing space.

This aquarium will likely always be known for it’s monstrously large viewing window in it’s equally large oceanarium. This 6 million gallon saltwater tank has a viewing window that is 23 feet tall and 61 feet wide (oh, and 2 feet thick!). You could spend an afternoon in front of that window, it’s incredible.

However, my favorite tank was the reef tank. I love reefs and theirs was the best I’ve ever seen in an aquarium. The design of the tank was great, and the health of the fish and the reef was exceptional.

I could go on and on but words aren’t as good as pictures for this type of thing. Unfortunately the Georgia Aquarium website has almost no good photos. Luckily, flickr comes to the rescue with great photos.

Just because I’m on vacation doesn’t mean that “geeking on the ‘puter” stops. I’m happy to report that I was able to successfully install Windows Vista RC 1 (Build 5600) on my MacBook using Parallels (Release Candidate, Build 1898). This is the first time I’ve been able to make this work. There was no magic involved, the latest release of Parallels offers Vista as an “experimental” option in the drop downs. I mounted the ISO image in the virtual machine, booted and installed.

It works just fine. You don’t get Aero Glass, but you do get Aero. Haven’t played with it much, don’t expect I will until I return from vacation. However, I’m glad this configuration finally works.