Sorry for the lack of updates. I was on vacation for a week (in Orlando) and without any connection to the internet, not that I’d have had any time to use it even if it had been there. This week I have been catching up and getting ready for a two day meeting tomorrow and Friday. Busy, busy, busy.
This shot was actually taken at Huntington Beach in California – our trip to Orlando started with a brief visit to LA. I will get some Orlando photos up over the holiday weekend hopefully.
I received a more creative Paypal scam email than the normal ones. Instead of ‘a new email has been added to your account’ or ‘your account has been suspended,’ this one was a Paypal receipt for a new Sony Camera that had been billed to my account. There was a link in the email for me to dispute the charge. That, of course, goes to a fake Paypal site that asked me to login.
I still see a number of these each week, along with the lottery scams from the Netherlands.
The new Pier 14 gate, reflecting in the bay water. This was taken a week or so back before Passage appeared at the entrance to the pier.
The pier itself is built on top of a breakwater added to protect the ferry terminal. It was numbered 14 since its location is closest to the old pier 14. It will finally open to the public on June 16, 2006, along with Passage. While Passage will only spend 6 months there, one hopes the pier will last longer.
The metal woman is in fact the Passage, by Dan Das Mann and Karen Cusolito. She is the mother of a mother and child pair that debuted at Burning Man 2005.
The pair will be located at the entrance to Pier 14 in San Francisco for six months. The pier and the exhibit will open June 16 this year.
Interestingly, one of the crew on the production of the passage was none ofther than Simon Barber, one of Devicescape‘s founders and its current Chief Scientist.
More photos of her, and her currently headless, child in my Flickr stream.
Getting off the ferry this morning at the SF Ferry Building, I noticed a metal “sculpture” on a flatbed truck next to the Amtrak offices.
This evening, she was being assembled right there on the water front. I can’t believe that is her final location though as she is currently just standing on steel frame. Perhaps she will be moving to the end of Pier 14?
You can see a couple more photos of her in Planet Vicster’s photostream (one, two). I will take my real camera tomorrow and see if I can get some better shots of her – she might also be completed by tomorrow evening.
Simple configuration of wireless networks is a hot topic at the moment. Microsoft’s Rally program will include an implementation of the Wi-Fi Alliance‘s new protocol, code named Simple Config. Microsoft’s version is called Windows Connect Now-NET. Intel released an open source reference implementation.
Frank Hanzlik, the Wi-Fi Alliance’s managing director, is quoted in a WiFiNetNews posting though as saying “Simple Config isn’t quite as simple as all that.” For somebody implementing it, that is perhaps true, but it should be much simpler for end users.
Devicescape, my employer, is holding a free seminar next week to explain simple config from both a user’s perspective and, perhaps more importantly at the moment, from an engineer’s perspective.
Following on from my Asterisk enabled access point last year, I will be showing how to integrate Devicescape’s implementation of the proposed protocol (called Easy Access Technology) into a consumer device. That device this year is a home-made digital picture frame that connects to Flickr for its photos.
If you are going to be in the vicinity of the Doubletree Hotel in San Jose around 8:30am on Wednesday June 14, please stop by, pick up breakfast, say hello or ask any questions you might have about simple config or building a digital photo frame. If you can’t attend, or would like more information, drop me a line at my work email: john <at> devicescape <dot> com.
Following my last reply to Kodak Gallery’s customer support I received a reply that actually contained information (reproduced below). I am not sure whether it was posting the article on the blog or copying their PR department that prompted a response that was both more informative and much quicker than before.
The upshot is that the OfotoExpress tool was broken for people who have more than 100 albums by the recent site updates. Unfortunately, they don’t seem to know when they will have a fix for it. Read the response from Kevin C. after the jump.
I’ve noticed that more and more people are now asking for photo ID, supposedly for my security. This afternoon it was my apartment complex management, so I could exchange my old ‘X’ key for a new one (they changed the locks last week).
I was told the ID check was needed for my security. The key in question opens a few perimeter gates, the pool gates and the laundry room. The perimeter is not even fully fenced – there is even an open walkway right past the leasing office front door, and a driveway for cars behind it. The few gates that have locks rarely close on their own, so the key is not really needed (I don’t think I’ve used the locked perimeter gates more than a couple of times in the 8 years I’ve been here). If you forget the key, you only have to walk 50 yards to a gate-free entrance. The pool wall is low enough that kids climb over it all the time. That leaves the laundry room… hardly a threat to my security (and often propped open anyway during the day to ventilate it).