Greg Albrecht

My associate Comm-Lead (aka http://curikim.com) and I performed a FRS radio check on our way home from downtown. We used store bought 12 (14?) channel Motorola talk-about FRS radios. We took two different routes from work to home, here’s a map:

View FRS Test Route in a larger map

The map is somewhat self explanatory, but here’s some notes. We had very good coverage until Curi hit Duboce and Market. At that point I could pick her up if I turned the squelch all the way down. For the remainder of the trip I could tell there was a background signal but I could not make her out out until she reached the hill on 17th  and Clayton at which point I was at Masonic and Fell and received an excellent signal.

It seems from our test that in a flat part of the city, the expected range of FRS is about 4-6 blocks.

I’ve created a tar.gz, yet Python’s mimetypes.guess_type() and my OS’ file command see it as two different mime.types:

$ file SPL-28435-etc_apps.tar.gz
SPL-28435-etc_apps.tar.gz: gzip compressed data, was "SPL-28435-etc_apps.tar",
last modified: Mon Dec 28 11:56:05 2009, max compression

$ python
Python 2.6.4 (r264:75706, Dec 16 2009, 06:15:35)
[GCC 4.0.1 (Apple Inc. build 5488)] on darwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import mimetypes
>>> mimetypes.guess_type('SPL-28435-etc_apps.tar.gz')
('application/x-tar', 'gzip')

If I attach this file to a JIRA with this mime-type and then download the file:

$ file SPL-28435-etc_apps.tar.gz
SPL-28435-etc_apps.tar.gz: data

If I attach the file to JIRA using the mime-type ‘application/x-gzip’ and then download the file:

$ file SPL-28435-etc_apps.tar.gz
SPL-28435-etc_apps.tar.gz:    gzip compressed data, was "SPL-28435-etc_apps.tar",
last modified: Mon Dec 28 11:56:05 2009, max compression

I’ve also tried overriding Python’s mime.magic without luck:

>>> from mimetypes import MimeTypes
>>> m = MimeTypes()
>>> m.read('/usr/share/file/magic.mime')
>>> m.guess_type('SPL-28435-etc_apps.tar.gz')
('application/x-tar', 'gzip')

One of my more favorite HST quotes is from the book Hells Angels (1966):

The Edge… There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.

Which is very reminiscent of Santayana‘s Tipperary 101:

Only the dead are safe ; only the dead have seen the end of war.

Original sent to members of the Red Cross DAT Communications team and Duboce Park NERT:

At the past few events I’ve noticed volunteers arriving without the
appropriate safety gear. If the agency we’re working with has issued
us any type of gear, be that gloves, helmets, vests or radios, it is
our responsibility to bring these items to every event, be it
training, exercise, actual incident or drill. The idea behind these
events is to test our response, and part of that response is being
prepared – lack of these items constitutes a lack of preparedness and
an inability to respond. If you’re missing any of your safety gear
please report the missing items to you Team Lead or Coordinator.

Gear that’s appropriate for responders:
1. Your Agency ID
2. Helmet
3. Safety Vest or Agency Jacket/Vest
4. Gloves
5. Amateur Radio (if licensed)
6. Work Boots

Of course, when the big one hits we might not be able to get to this
equipment, until then don’t let the disaster in your closet keep you
from participating in drills.

http://www.inc.com/magazine/20091201/when-and-how-to-micromanage.html

Luckily I rarely have to deal with these people:

“At the top of every company, there’s at least one person who really
cares and really wants the product and the customer experience to be
great. That’s you, and me, and Ryan. Below that person, there are
layers of people, many of whom are equally dedicated and equally
talented.

But at some point as you work your way through an organization, you
find pockets of people who don’t care that much. For them, it’s a job.
They just want to get through the day.”

http://eng.kaching.com/2009/12/baking-availability-sla-into-code.html

I like the idea of offloading the responsibility for determining if a
service is ‘available’ off onto the caller and gaming yourself to
think about what should happen if your SLA is violated.

I found this informative list of deadly facts about Australia: http://australiaisdeadly.com/

Apparently the deadliest continent in the Universe is coming for you!

I really appreciate the New York Times URL formatting: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/24/nyregion/24jersey.html?_r=1&hp

Everything after ? is likely to get stripped off by poorly written URL parsers, but that doesn’t really matter, because going to the URL without those parameters works: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/24/nyregion/24jersey.html

…and Twitter killed it.

For example, to subscribe to the RSS feed from BBC News, I could:

1. Go to the BBC News Homepage: http://news.bbc.co.uk/
2. Click the RSS feed link.
3. Add the RSS feed to my favorite RSS reader.
   • Uh… which reader should I use? reader.google.com? a desktop app? my web browser?
4. Watch and wait for my RSS reader to refresh the feed.

Or, I could:

1. Go to http://twitter.com/bbcnews
2. Click Follow
3. Use the twitter.com website or whatever twitter client I’ve already got installed to view both friend updates and BBC news updates.

For me the choice is pretty clear.