Quantum Forest

I am in the process of obtaining a visa, for which the application requires a 3×4 cm picture. I have a couple of good ‘passport type’ pictures; however, it is not possible to print passport size (or small size, for that matter) pictures from either iPhoto or Picasa.

There are a few products for either mac or windows that let you print these small sizes. Nevertheless, why would one pay for adding barebones functionality to software? http://www.epassportphoto.com allows choosing country and type of document (to get the exact size required), and then uploading a picture. The picture is then resized in such a way as to get the right photo size when printing in common photo paper.

This is the only function of this free site and it works really well.

Today I received an email from an old colleague. Well, it was not a personal email but one of those hideous PowerPoint chain letters. It was not the first time receiving such time wasters so I promptly replied with something along the line of ‘please send me strictly necessary email, no chain letters or such’. This person got really offended and stated that I was a ’stuck-up social climber with a Ph.D.’ for not enjoying his email.

Why do some people feel they have the right to invade my main route of communication? Would they make the same phone call to their list of contacts and expect to be well received? It seems that any idiot feels entitled to special attention when the cost barriers for communication get close to zero.

Where was Merlin Mann when I needed him? I was looking for a while for a page for which I could not remember the name so I simply told my ex-colleague to get stuffed. Hours later I remembered the name of Merlin’s Thanks No site, which is what one could use when wants to be more polite… Well, this guy would have got offended anyway.

I took a short break of writing while trying to upgrade, change and dust off my Plus Tree site. The site has been in a state of abandonment for a while, and I used some time to move it to Wordpress, with the aim of standardising on a single blogging platform.

After moving the few posts contained in that site I started thinking of the design of the site and got stuck. One of the nice things of Wordpress is the huge number of templates available. At the beginning I was quite happy to browse places like Wordpress themes, or one of the numerous Best Wordpress themes sites, which aim to be link magnets. However, one problem was the realisation of how themes are just a veneer of design: essentially most of them are applying pretty pictures and colours, many times trying to emulate real life objects (a folder, a paper clip, a paper pad).

But, what is a web ‘page’? I mean, what is the essence of a ‘page’? How important is the actual content versus the bits and pieces of colours that we are hanging to that content? At what moment the ersatz paper pad becomes important enough to warrant its presence?

I was struggling with this when I decided to roll out my own theme — although I still have a weak spot for plain text themes (I use one in Tren de carga). It will take me a while, but I will do it. Meanwhile I will stick to my current themes: Thirteen (in this site) and Sandpress (in Plus Tree).

After reading the news on Microsoft’s offer for Yahoo (a ‘few’ billion dollars) I was thinking not about what Microsoft would get out for that deal — I don’t care much about industry speculations — but what is in it for me as a user/consumer. The short answer is nothing.

I use only two Yahoo services: flickr and delicious. However, I do not make use of the ‘social‘ features. I do not keep track of who is using the same tags or comment on other people’s pictures or expect comments on mine. I use delicious so I can have a central repository for bookmarks: I do not need tags if I have access to decent search. Any, and I really mean any, service that will let me keep bookmarks, find them and import the ones I have is good enough.

I am not sure why I use flickr. At some point I thought about sharing my pictures (but it is irrelevant now), then I thought backup (but I only keep a low resolution version of the photos) so the only use I have for it is to geolocate the photos. That, and putting some of them in this blog (or in Tren de Carga). However, as many people living outside the USA know, flickr’s mapping feature is very poor in other parts of the world. Thus, I would happily switch to any other service that would let me geolocate photos in a better way. I have tried Zooomr and Panoramio but I am not convinced by their convenience yet.

I am not claiming to be a representative user, but from my point of view there is no reason to be loyal to any of these services. In the case of the former, there is no hurry on moving out, but there are already acceptable options. In the case of the latter, I am keen on finding a service to keep some of my photos geographically organised, particularly now that I want to prepare a new set of lectures.

Coming back to the start of this post, unless there are some big changes coming from a successful deal between Yahoo and Microsoft, from an enduser view point the effect will be no change of value. No change of value, no big news.

This evening I created a simple favicon for Quantum Forest. It is based on the anümka, a Mapuche symbol for a plant. I created the favicon online using http://www.favicon.cc/.

Spotty posting is a clear symptom of either being sick with internet or just too busy in real life. In my case is mostly the second; this is the time when I have overlapping teaching of regression modelling and introduction to tree breeding. The other thing I have been doing is completing project reports (two gone!) and playing with some data for a journal manuscript. Overall, I have written more this month than at any other time that I can remember.

On the contrary, I have been posting very little to this site and a few posts to http://trendecarga.com. Stating the obvious, the more I write offline the less I write online; and I have been feeling the urge to complete a series of pending writing projects.

A few weeks ago I submitted a paper that has been in that limbo-like close-to-finish for three years. As soon as I finish teaching in three weeks time, I will complete a second paper and start writing a third one. This will take a toll on this site, but one does not get brownie points for blogging or playing with HTML.

There will certainly be some updates to this site (although most likely not in the blog part) as well as a new design for http://plustree.com. On the latter I have been slowly working in a new template and CSS file, aiming for a cleaner and simpler look.

Re-stating the obvious, real life has much wider significance, it is richer and more meaningful than any web site. Do not let anybody convince you of the opposite.

One of the issues of living immersed in another language and culture is the slow — or not so slow — deterioration of the command of the original language. There is not enough practice, not enough interaction to keep it healthy and alive. To avoid this, I will be writing some posts in Spanish (hopefully) with a friend of mine.

Because this is an experiment, and quite different from the contents of this site it will be under a different name: Tren de Carga (Freight train). The name originates from a verse by Chilean poet David Turkeltaub, which says ‘vienes tarde otra vez, como tren de carga’ (you are late again, like a freight train). I am not sure why, but this verse has been stuck in my head for many years and this is the first time I have found a use for it.

As soon as I heard the news of Google Calendar I got really interested in the idea. As many other people, I found the service quite interesting but with three annoying missing features:

1. Option to set calendar hours, I mean start and finish hours for a day. I rarely make appointments at 3 am or 11pm. This makes life easier but one can live — at least for a while — without this being implemented.
2. Simple to dos, with keywords (tags) and due dates. This one is important but, again, I can wait for this or keep my list somewhere else.
3. The ‘almost a deal breaker’: lack of synchronisation with desktop clients (iCal in my case). How does one access the bloody calendar without internet access and/or a supported browser?

Spanning Sync has positioned itself almost as the de facto synchronisation product between Google Calendar and iCal. However, I still struggled with its price: USD25 per year or USD65 for a permanent subscription sounded very steep just for syncing; particularly when using Google Calendar is essentially free.

I then tried a couple of other approaches. I tested using Thunderbird + Lightning + Provider. I do not mind using Thunderbird as an email client: I think it is quite good, except for the lack of integration with Address Book in the mac. However, after following a very good description of the setup, I realised that the calendar is synchronised and visible only when there is internet connection, defeating the purpose. I am sure the developers are working in persistence while disconnected, but meanwhile is essentially useless.

Quick note here: Incidentally, if you have problems adding a second calendar, just use your normal login and password for the calendars, rather than the bigcode@group.calendar.google.com set up by default.

After not making progress with Thunderbird, I went for GCALDaemon. After fiddling around with download, permissions, editing configuration files, etc. I managed to make it run. Nevertheless, it crashed and trashed the contents of my online Google Calendar after one hour of use. Good thing that I had a backup. I can’t remember where I read a user commenting that ‘why would you pay for Spanning Sync if there was GCALDaemon’. Short answer: read the previous three sentences.

At some point, one realises that the time invested (or wasted) is certainly worth much more than the syncing service’s cost. So I was ready to pay for Spanning Sync, when one major improvement was announced: mobile browser access (http://mobile.google.com/calendar). I always carry my mobile phone, so if I have coverage (most of the time) I am OK. When visiting Australia last April I could still access Vodafone at domestic prices, making the system viable. However, when roaming in other countries the price to access calendar and email through the phone quickly becomes prohibitive. A good thing is that this type of trip does not happen that often, so I will rely on mobile access for the next couple of months and give the system a proper test.

(Or why do I prefer software where I do have a say)

Recently I was commenting on some software that I use for writing. I think that one of the main reasons non-strictly related to software usefulness is the quality of the community around the software. This has two elements:

• How open is the developer to feedback from the users and
• How active is the community at using the software to push the developer(s) to continue moving forward.

As an example, I like using Journler to keep track of odd ends in my mac computer. I also like using Writeroom when starting to write, because I can focus on my ideas only. Both programs have relatively active groups of users (here and here) and receptive developers, who are looking for feedback. The feeling is of people who care about a product, which in general is a necessary (although not sufficient) condition for good programs. By comparison, I struggle with Copywrite, because there is no public feedback mechanism: I do not know what other users think or what are the projects of the developer for this software. Is he (or she) still developing it or now he is moving to live in Vanuatu to enjoy the rest of his life?

An interesting element is that both Writeroom and Journler are free (sensu gratis)—although the developers ask for donations—while Copywrite costs US$30 or so. There is a psychological element on paying for software; one thinks that the programmers must be working on the product. However, there is no feedback to confirm this assumption in Copywrite. In addition, I expect more activity from smaller companies: they are supossed to be more agile than, say, Microsoft.

Thus, if you are a small company I expect you to show some changes here and there. If you are a small company and charge for your product I better should have a say on what is going on. If you are a large company, most likely I will buy your software only if I need to, because most probably you are developing not very interesting products (there are exceptions¹ of course).

¹ Wolfram’s Mathematica is an example. Insightful’s Splus is not: R is much more active, there is plenty of feedback and it is free.

Most of the time I work with small files, mostly text, even if they have a fair amount of equations. Equations are not a big deal, particularly if I am using LaTeX (with TeXShop in the mac or MikTeX in PCs). Nevertheless, some times I have to deliver presentations or—in this particular case—receive someone else’s presentation for my classes.

If I am producing teaching material I use Keynote, which is a sucker for file size (my main pet hate with it), but it looks great. I can go for Keynote because I am using my Macbook Pro. If I am giving a presentation to industry I normally have to put my presentation in to someone else’s computer, so I go for PowerPoint (and do not use any compressed images), to avoid errors.

Anyway, this time I was supposed to receive a PowerPoint file from a guest lecturer, so I could print copies of the presentation for the students. The problem was that the presentation was 16MB (not big for these days, mostly pictures), and the university has an attachment limit of 6MB. Google mail has a limit of 10MB and I wanted to avoid taking time for the guest lecturer partitioning his presentation in to 5MB chunks.

I tried using Mediamax, which allows anonymous uploads to registered users. It did not work that well, because the files would take several hours to show up in my Mediamax file manager. Then we tried with a much simpler solution: Mailbigfile. This worked flawlessly, I immediately received an email with a web address from where to download the files and the interface was quite clean. There were only a few text ads to support the service. Simple, reliable and free: what else do I need? In some cases encryption could be a concern, but they do offer a ‘pro’ encrypted version for USD18 a year. That aside, I do not need hosting big files in a permanent basis, so Mailbigfile has spot on features for me.