Dru's Blog

BusinessWeek - February 2006

dru — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 21:31:27 +0000

This is a Business Week cover from Feb. 2006 about the economy. The subtitle is “Why it’s so much stronger than you think” .

At any rate… you didn’t have to be a genius then to see that the housing bubble was a completely, and I mean completely, unsustainable situation. People were feeling very very rich. Cheap advice. This just goes with the old saying… you get what you pay for.

What it should have said is: “How it is so much more fragile than you think” and then gone into the depths about how leveraged the entire situation was.

Obama has a Podcast

dru — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 21:16:00 +0000

Very cool!

I think this presidency understands technology and is going to feel much more connected to the general population than any other in history.

Historic Day! Yes We Did!

dru — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 19:21:03 +0000

I’m very pleased with the presidential outcome. I’m still confounded that this was even close in some states… but that is a long, pointed, combustible discussion.

Lets all look at this as a big step forward for the world!

Problems with Google Chrome? Try This

dru — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 04:13:43 +0000

I was having problems with Google chrome. I’m on PacBell -> SBC -> I mean ATT DSL here in California. For some reason, after a little while, the browser would start failing on all sorts of URLs. After experimenting a while, I noticed that it was due to the DNS resolver on my Windows XP box. It was negatively caching a lot of entries. This means that it tried to lookup some name (like www.wikipedia.com), and then couldn’t get an answer. So the resolver then remembers that it never got an answer and for the next 5-15 minutes immediately responds to Google chrome with a ‘no such name’ response, without asking the internets. I could test my theory easily by doing a ‘ipconfig /flushdns’ in a CMD shell window (or what they used to call a DOS prompt). Every time I did that, the page that wasn’t working would load. Still, if the images on the page were on a different domain… they would break. I got frustrated and started digging into the problem.

I did some searching and found that Chrome has this neat new feature called DNS Prefetching to improve the perceived performance of web browsing. Essentially, it tries to lookup all the DNS names on a web page while you are on it. After I flushed the DNS ‘one more time…’, and then disabled this feature in the options… everything started working great.

I don’t have time tonight to diagnose where the problem lies, but hopefully this will get resolved in the future.

(p.s. this was written in a more layman style, since some of my posts get read by people trying to solve a particular problem. apologies if this was a bit too wordy for the 3 highly technical readers out there)

The New Era in Storage finally Here

dru — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 21:03:24 +0000

People are finally waking up to the new era in storage - persistent silicon devices.

The crossover has begun, all that has to happen now is mass market adoption. When you see this in low-end machines, there will be huge changes in software design. For example, remember when you used to worry about non-24 bit video displays.

Huge changes…

I love this old siggraph video

dru — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 01:42:08 +0000

If you want this, it was:

Issue 120: SIGGRAPH 97 Electronic Theater Program

Billy Ray Shyster’s House of Discount Special Effects & Animation - Texas A&M University Visualization Laboratory

Those Nasty Short Sellers

dru — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 20:07:13 +0000

Or “Miss Jackson” Short Sellers, if you please….

Bloomberg has an article about a short seller being caught for naked short selling. Nasty!. Unfortunately, his activities only allowed him to profit $200,000. That probably didn’t take down the markets.

The Emergency Bailout Bill - and what it means for Cyclists

dru — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 19:48:54 +0000

your government at work:

The SFBC is happy to announce that after seven years of slogging, the federal Bicycle Commuter Benefit suddenly became a reality last week as part of the $850 billion bailout bill signed by the President on Friday. The “Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008″ contains language (scroll to p. 205) that will amend the U.S. Tax Code to permit employers to reimburse employees, tax free, for “reasonable” expenses related to bike commutes, including bike and equipment purchases, repairs, and storage if the bicycle is used as a “substantial part” of the commuter’s trip to work for the month. The benefit option will go into effect for tax year 2009 (so start saving those receipts come January). Thanks to Oregon Congressman Earl Blumenauer and Senator Ron Wyden for their years of work on this initiative (though, as it happens, neither Blumenauer nor Wyden voted in favor of the massive bailout bill!).

The Original Newton OS - Mac Common Lisp - Ralph

dru — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 21:45:00 +0000

here is the story of the original Newton OS as the language Ralph and Dylan off of Mac Common Lisp

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi

dru — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 03:36:16 +0000

“It’s their problem. It’s their bill. And they’re going to have to figure out if they can support it,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said of Republicans.

I emailed Pelosi today. I support her position.