It's Just this Little Chromium Switch Here

GTOPS Statement

chip — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 20:15:06 -0500

Last weekend, I mentioned the press conference to announce the Grant for Technology Opportunities selections for this year. The press conference happened this afternoon, and will be replayed this week on cable channel 6. Here is the statement I gave at the press conference:

Over seven years ago, local leaders had a vision to use technology in novel ways to help people and to strengthen our community. That vision led to the Grant for Technology Opportunities program, or GTOPs.

GTOPs was created in 2001. It was designed by the predecessor of the Austin Community Technology and Telecommunications Commission. The Commission wanted to support digital technology projects that could benefit our community. GTOPs is funded by the city, and is administered through the city's office of Telecommunications and Regulatory Affairs, or TARA.

The goals of GTOPs are to:

1. Support programs that provide public access to computers and information technology, especially among under-served segments of our community.

2. Support programs that provide information technology literacy, education, and training.

3. Support programs that use information and communication technologies in innovative ways that serve the community.

4. Provide seed funding for Austin community and non-profit organizations for their technological outreach efforts.

GTOPs is a matching grant program in which local organizations submit programs for consideration. Applicants must demonstrate community support for their program by matching any funds awarded with an equal amount of additional donations or in-kind contributions.

In its first six years, GTOPs awarded $570,000 in grants.

More than 15,800 individuals have benefited from a variety of programs including computer training, media production, and Internet accessibility. GTOPs programs have served people all across the community, including kids, families, and seniors.

GTOPs recipients have raised more than $1,000,000 in matching funds. That includes 17,000 volunteer hours, $429,000 in-kind donations, and $368,000 cash donations. GTOPs grantees have exceeded the one-to-one match requirement by 75% -- an extraordinary return on our investment.

As a condition of receiving a GTOPs award, the recipient organization promises to meet certain goals for success, and a set of measures that evaluate the results of their program. To date, the success rate of GTOPs programs has averaged 123%. That means most GTOPs grantees are not only meeting, but exceeding our expectations for success.

GTOPs is a remarkable program, achieving remarkable results. It's a tribute to the innovation and community spirit of Austin.

Many people have contributed to the success of GTOPs. First, thanks to all the local organizations doing such great work. Also, thanks to the people of Austin for supporting this program -- particularly those who have volunteered to serve on the grant review committee. Thanks to the city staff at TARA, and program administrator Sheena Harden. Sheena has been involved in GTOPs from the very beginning, and nobody in this city has worked hard to make GTOPs the success it is.

Finally. GTOPs would not be where it is today if not for the continued support of the Austin City Council. The Council has allocated funding in the amount of $150,000 for the current fiscal year (2008-09).

Our City Council stood behind GTOPs through the boom years and through the lean years. That steadfast support has allowed GTOPs to grow into the success it's become, and so, our thanks to them.

GTOPS Press Conference Monday

chip — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 12:22:26 -0500

On Monday, I'll be participating in a press conference where the City of Austin will be announcing the 2008 selections for the Grant for Technology Opportunities program.

Here is the press release:

Austin City Council Member Brewster McCracken and members of the Austin Community Technology and Telecommunications Commission will present the 2008 Grant for Technology Opportunities Program Awards at an announcement ceremony on Monday, April 21, at Austin City Hall, 301 W. Second St.

Ten winning projects will receive GTOPs funding for connecting citizens with information technology, computers and the Internet.

"GTOPs enables local organizations to leverage technology in novel ways," said Commission Chair Chip Rosenthal. "Its achievements are remarkable, and a tribute to the innovation and community spirit of Austin."

Some of the projects include introducing at-risk youth to rocketry, robotics, aquatic ecology and solar energy; providing adults with disabilities specialized computer work stations to assist in finding employment opportunities online; and offering bilingual computer training to non-native English speaking families.

The GTOPs program was designed by the Austin Community Technology and Telecommunications Commission to support digital technology projects that benefit our community. For more information, visit www.gtops.org.

GTOPs Awards Presentation
Monday, April 21, 2008
2 p.m.
Austin City Hall, 301 W. Second Street
News Conference Room

Community Forum on the Transition to Digital Television

chip — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 13:49:01 -0500

Earlier this year I wrote about the transition to digital television.

This weekend, the Austin Community Technology and Telecommunications Commission is co-sponsoring an educational event to let people know about DTV and how it affects them.

The Austin Community Technology and Telecommunications Commission and the City of Austin’s Office of Telecommunications and Regulatory Affairs will present a free community forum on "The Transition to Digital Television" from 2 to 4 p.m. Sunday, March 30, 2008, at the Conley-Guerrero Senior Activity Center, 808 Nile St.

Members of the community forum are invited to learn more about the digital TV (DTV) transition, and who will be affected by this technological advancement. This transition affects viewers with televisions that operate with roof-top antennas or "rabbit ears."

The full details are here: City to host forum on transition to digital television

last.fm Submission Flakiness

chip — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 16:19:00 -0500

I have amarok configured to submit tracks played to last.fm. If you go there you can see what I've recently listened to.

I get frequent errors in the amarok status bar such as

Failed to submit 'Mining for Gold' and 8 other tracks

and

Failed to submit several tracks to last.fm

I Googled the messages and found many reports of the problem, such as this thread. Most people pointed their fingers at a server problem. I was skeptical.

When, however, I tried to log into last.fm through the web interface and saw it intermittently fail, that confirmed for me that the flakiness lives in last.fm servers.

I saw this thread that suggested resetting the password--even to the same password--cleared the problem. I tried that and it worked. Before, I had dozens of songs pending to be posted. After, they all went through.

Here's hoping that last.fm eventually fixes their infrastructure problems.

Get Social

chip — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 21:36:11 -0500

A note, primarily to my readers (both of them) who follow this blog by RSS.

I've added a bunch of social network badges to the sidebar of my site. If you know me, feel free to friend me or stalk me or whatever it is you kids do these days.

FAIL: Album Cover Guesser

chip — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 18:16:54 -0500

I was using the Amarok "Album Cover Manager" tool to fill in the missing cover artwork in my music collection.

It has a "Fetch Missing Covers" button, which goes to Amazon and retrieves the artwork it needs. The lookup often makes mistakes, particularly because I tagged artists in a discouraged "Lastname, Firstname" form. Still, it's easier to fetch them all, then go back and manually fixup the ones it got wrong.

I ran it over several hundred albums. It made a lot of mistakes, but none quite so hilarious as the one to the right. The album cover you see is what it selected for London Calling by The Clash.

Media Center Network Control

chip — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 01:29:10 -0500

My media center PC is an ASUS bookshelf computer running Ubuntu Linux and KDE desktop. I use it primarily for music, running the Amarok music player.

Our house is pretty small and open. I can see the entire living room from my desk. I often play music on the media system while I'm working. The annoying bit is that I have to get up from my desk and walk over to the living room anytime I want to fiddle the controls.

I wish I had a good way to control the music from my desk. I've been puzzling over this for a whilte. I've tried various ways to control Amarok remotely and none were satisfactory. Then it dawned on me that I was missing the obvious: I didn't want to control just the media player but the whole desktop. I can do that using something like Virtual Network Computing (VNC).

VNC requires two pieces: one that exports the display (remote frame buffer) from the server, another that connects the client to the frame buffer. The Ubuntu KDE desktop provides all the pieces I need in its default installation. The krfb program runs on the media center computer to provide "remote frame buffer" services. The krdc program runs on my workstation to act as a "remote desktop connection" client.

Setup krfb Server

The first step is to setup krfb on the server. It's launched from the "Internet" applications group on the KDE menu. I started the program, clicked the "Configure" button, and set the configuration settings (see image to right, click to view full size) as follows:

Allow uninvited connections: Enable so that client can connect without a specific invitation. This can be insecure, so we'll set a password in a moment.
Announce service on the network: Enable so the client can discover this server.
Confirm uninvited connections before accepting: Disable so that server will accept connection requests without any intervention. Again, this can be insecure, so we'll want to protect with a password.
Allow uninvited connections to control the desktop: Enable so that the keyboard and mouse on the remote system work to control the desktop.
Password: Finally, set a password so that only authorized users can access the desktop.

Setup krdc Client

Now, back on my workstation, I can run the krdc program to connect to the remote desktop. Again, this is under the "Internet" applications group. You can type in the URL of the remote display (in my case, it was vnc://coldsnap.unicom.com:5900), enter the password, and the window opens up displaying the remote desktop.

Or, if you aren't sure what URL to use, here is a trick that should work if you enabled the "Announce service" setting in krfb. Launch krdc and click the "Browse" button. Wait about 60 seconds, until the "Rescan" button becomes enabled. Then exit and restart krdc. This time you should see the newly enabled remote desktop in the list of connections.

The connection window is shown to the right (click to view full size).

If you find the mouse is jerky, select: Advanced → Always Show Local Cursor.

Setup Windows Client

The KDE remote desktop is based on the same protocol used by VNC. This means any system that has a VNC client could control the media system. I installed TightVNC on my wife's Windows computer, so she too can have control over the media system.

This setup has given me the remote control capability I've been looking for. I now can operate the media system from any computer in the house.

Now all I want is a Google phone with an embedded VNC client.

Best Breakfast...All Made in Austin

chip — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 16:26:40 -0500

I had the most phenomenal breakfast this morning. It occurred to me afterwards that it was completely made of foods from local Austin sellers.

First, there was the migas quiche by The Soup Peddler. I've had a few things from them, and everything has been extremely flavorful and delicious. Past favorites include chicken corn chowder and chicken pot pie. I'll add the migas quiche to the list. The crust was very tasty and flaky, a little worse for the microwave reheating but still quite good. The filling was light and tasty, and not the "you've got 20 eggs in your mouth" feel I've had with some other quiches.

The quiche was topped with mild salsa from Hill Country Homestyle Canning. I was already a fan of their pickles. Their plain dill pickles are a favorite. The salsa is remarkably fresh and tasty.

Finally, my beverage was Alfred's Blend coffee from Anderson's Coffee. I discovered their coffee many years ago, but got out of the habit of buying from them. Their hours are inconvenient, and it's become so much easier to find coffee beans in the store. What I forgot, however, is how great their coffees are, even compared the the beans you get at the upscale yuppie market store.

This morning's breakfast may not win my "Best Breakfast Ever" title--that's held by my pancakes with fresh pecans and apple smoked bacon. Instead, I'll give it the "Best Quick Breakfast Ever" title, thanks to the foods from several great local merchants.

Bar Camp Austin III

chip — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 19:54:44 -0600

Just got home from Bar Camp Austin III. I had a phenomenally good time.

You usually hear at gatherings like this that the interesting stuff happens in the hallways, and the sessions just fill the time between. Well, not here. The sessions were excellent. I didn't have to suffer a single product demo. Every session was well facilitated, the participants engaged, and nobody boorishly hogged the discussion.

One of my favorite sessions was titled something "Weblog Vanity Sites and Thought Leaders". No, I don't know what that means either. The organizer never showed up. So a bunch of us just talked about blogging, circling the topic back to how to make a difference (and be noticed) with our blogging. The group conclusion seemed to be that being "A List" (or noticed by the "A List") is becoming less important to getting ideas recognized. What's most important is becoming a respected authority in a niche area--which may involve an offline presence in addition to your blogging.

Congratulations to whurley and all the organizers on a job well done.

Thanks to GSD&M for hosting the event. One of the things that made the day so great was the large number (five) of session rooms, and plenty of room to mill about between.

Community Media Weekend

chip — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 01:36:42 -0600

This has been my weekend of community media.

Saturday, I attended the Texas Community Media Summit. There were several highlights of the event for me. For instance, it was nice to see Debbie Austin from The Texas Observer give a shout-out to Austin Bloggers, a site I manage.

I also enjoyed finally meeting U.T. R.T.F. Professor Laura Stein who seems to have a good earthy handle on community media issues. She lead a session on media convergence. It got me thinking about funding for projects such as open source tools. One effect of Texas SB 5 is that many cities will find their PEG (access television) budgets cash rich for capital equipment, but starved for operating funds. Maybe some of those funds can be used for servers and other infrastructure for community media projects.

I had a blast chatting with public policy superstar Charles Benton. He got me thinking about the impacts the digital television transition will have on community media, and what opportunities there may be.

Then, on Sunday, I went to see the new Michel Gondry movie Be Kind Rewind.

"Wait! Wait!" you say. "What's that got to do with community media?"

I don't want to give too much away, but if you've seen the trailer you already know it's about a couple of guys who end up creating their own movies. What I enjoyed was seeing how the process of creating their own media ultimately affects their neighborhood and the people around them.

The movie was sweet and had a lot of heart. I enjoyed it a lot.

The embedded video is Michel Gondry's own sweded version of the movie trailer. (I'll also recommend the sweded trailer by these guys, with its inspired Big Lebowski bit.)

Sun's McNealy Gets It Backwards

chip — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 16:01:50 -0600

According to a Network World article posted today:

Telecommunication companies need to go beyond just providing bandwidth and look into acquiring Internet destination sites that are heavily trafficked, Sun Chairman Scott McNealy said on Friday.

McNealy gets it precisely backwards. What the net needs is a complete separation between bandwidth and application.

When the bandwidth provider is also the service provider, they don't have an incentive to make the network work well for anything but their applications. Want to watch a movie on Comcast cable television service? No problem! Want to watch the same movie on a peer-to-peer service across your Comcast broadband connection? Whups, that's being throttled.

McNealy's vision is good for Sun: it would boost demand for their equipment. But it's very bad telecom policy.

Read the full article here: McNealy: Telcos falling behind in Internet race

Comcast Thwarts Public at Net Neutrality Hearing

chip — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 11:15:08 -0600

The FCC held a recent public hearing on network neutrality, and a lot of scrutiny was placed on Comcast's degredation of peer-to-peer applications on their broadband network. This, for instance, hampers video applications and discourages Comcast subscribers from using alternatives to their cable TV services.

The Save the Internet Coalition discovered that Comcast (or one of their supporters) bussed in people to fill chairs, so the public would be blocked from participating.

Comcast — or someone who really, really likes Comcast — evidently bused in its own crowd. These seat-warmers, were paid to fill the room, a move that kept others from taking part.

This is despicable. Comcast really needs a lesson in open communication.

Full article here: Comcast Blocking: First the Internet — Now the Public

Hiccups in the Linux RAID

chip — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 19:05:57 -0600

In December, I made a RAID 1 network storage server by adding a cheap SATA controller and a couple of 500GB hard disks to chinacat. For the most part, it has worked great, but there is one hiccup.

First the good news: the network storage server is working every bit as well as I had hoped and everything that I'd hope to do is falling into place. All of our media files are now consolidated in one place. All of our desktop systems are (finally!) being backed up. Plus, there are all the other groovy benefits of having a shared storage server in the house.

I started the benchmark series because I was concerned with the performance of Linux software RAID. My test results suggested that performance would be acceptable. My real world results underscore that. For a while, I even moved my home directory off of the primary hard drive onto the slower RAID 1 device. I ended up moving it back not because of performance, but to build a more reliable backup architecture.

But there is one problem: every couple of weeks the RAID loses a drive. What happens is that the drive fails and Linux is no longer able to talk to the device. When the drive fails, the log says something like:

Feb 24 08:42:11 chinacat kernel: [823505.900000] sd 3:0:0:0: [sdc] Result: hostbyte=DID_BAD_TARGET driverbyte=DRIVER_OK,SUGGEST_OK
Feb 24 08:42:11 chinacat kernel: [823505.900000] end_request: I/O error, dev sdc, sector 0
Feb 24 08:42:11 chinacat kernel: [823505.900000] sd 3:0:0:0: [sdc] Result: hostbyte=DID_BAD_TARGET driverbyte=DRIVER_OK,SUGGEST_OK
Feb 24 08:42:11 chinacat kernel: [823505.900000] end_request: I/O error, dev sdc, sector 0

Of course, I'm blissfully unaware of the failure, thanks to the magic of RAID. The system switches the RAID over to single-drive degraded mode and just keeps running. The only reason I know there has been a disk failure event is because the RAID system emails me:

To: root [at] unicom [dot] com
From: mdadm monitoring 
Subject: Fail event on /dev/md0:chinacat

This is an automatically generated mail message from mdadm
running on chinacat

A Fail event had been detected on md device /dev/md0.

Faithfully yours, etc.

P.S. The /proc/mdstat file currently contains the following:

Personalities : [linear] [multipath] [raid0] [raid1] [raid6] [raid5] [raid4] [raid10]
md0 : active raid1 sdb[0] sdc[2](F)
      488386496 blocks [2/1] [U_]

unused devices:

The failures have been puzzling. I've been watching the S.M.A.R.T. system, and there have been no indications of drive problems.

The first time this happened I ran basic diagnostics on the drive, but no problems were found. I rebooted the system and it saw the drive fine. I told the RAID to rebuild the drive and it did. Everything worked absolutely fine—until a few weeks later when it happened again.

This situation repeated itself a couple of times. I was trying to think of some excuse to send the drive back to the manufacturer when something surprising happened: the other drive in the RAID failed in the same exact way (and rebuilt fine on reboot).

My suspicion is now turned from the drive to the controller (or to the Linux drivers for the controller). Back in December, I gave a glowing review of the SIIG SC-SAT212-S4 SATA controller. No longer. Until this issue is resolved, I'll have to withhold my recommendation for that controller. Mind you, I'm not blaming the controller yet. I'm just saying something ain't right the setup.

Sample Ballots for March 4 Primaries

chip — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 17:10:51 -0600

I've several people asking on various mailing lists for sample ballots for the upcoming election. Here is the scoop for Travis County residents.

The web page for the Travis County Clerk, Elections Division is here:
http://www.co.travis.tx.us/county_clerk/election/default.asp

The sample ballots for the March 4 primaries are here:
http://www.co.travis.tx.us/county_clerk/election/20080304/sample.asp

You'll want to have your voter registration card in hand, so you can lookup your districts and see which items apply to you. Or, you can lookup your registration info here:
http://www.traviscountytax.org/showVoterNameSearch.do

Warrantless Wiretaps are Illegal Again

chip — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 13:13:40 -0600

The "Protect America Act" has expired.

This was a law passed in haste last year, as an addendum to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. It authorized the previously illegal (and I would hope unconstitutional) act of spying on Americans without a warrant or court order.

Now that PAA has expired, no further warrantless wiretaps can be initiated. Existing surveillance continues, and new surveillance can be initiated with the rubber stamp of a FISA court. As the conservative Washington Times explains there will be little practical effect from the lapse.

The administration is claiming this is a severe blow to our intelligence gathering capability. Their actions, however, prove otherwise. If PAA was so necessary, the administration would have supported reauthorization without the poison pill of phone company amnesty.

Instead, the administration engaged in a game of chicken, cynically wielding the "national security" threat to get special deals for the phone companies. They lost, and took PAA down with them.

I hope that now PAA is gone we can start with a clean slate. If the intelligence community needs capabilities beyond FISA then Congress should act—but in a way that provides some form of legal oversight. I don't believe we need to write a blank check on our civil liberties to buy the security and intelligence this country needs.

Will Spam be the Booby Prize in the Debate Lottery?

chip — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 12:29:51 -0600

The Texas Democractic Party took a pummeling when it announced the public would not be allowed to attend the presidential debate here in Austin. So, they carved out a small block of seats and setup a drawing to give them away.

The Statesman is reporting this morning that 20,000 people have signed up for the 100 seats.

I can calculate the odds of getting a seat and they aren't looking too good: currently 1 in 200 and dropping fast. So, a lot of people are going to be sad losers in this lottery. Even worse, I fear they may end up with a booby prize: a bunch of spam.

You (obviously) need to provide all your contact information to enter the drawing. The web page, however, doesn't specify what the group will do with the private information it collects. The Texas Democratic Party web site does have a privacy policy, but it doesn't shed any light on this situation.

The signup form does not provide an option to be added to the Democractic Party lists. So, the immediate concern is whether that's because they decided to collect all the names entered and add them to contact lists without option to opt in or out. In this case, the chance of spam is near certainty.

Or, more charitably, maybe there is no option because this was all done in extreme haste and nobody thought to provide one. In this case, even though there is no immediate intent to spam, the temptation will be so great that the names almost certainly will be added to the organization's contact lists. Without clarity in the privacy policy or stated intent on the signup page, there is nothing to prevent that from happening.

So, it's already clear to me who the winner of this debate will be: The Texas Democractic Party. By releasing a small number of tickets, they are going to achieve a marketing bonanza: a massive, high quality marketing list with tens of thousands of pre-qualified contacts that can be sold or spammed.