Since giving up cable tv and going with other solutions, like Netflix, I’ve been enjoying watching TV more, while watching less. I spend little time just watching what’s on and more time watching what interests me.

Of late, I’ve been experimenting with content from foreign sources, like Europe and Asia. In this mix of this, I’ve ended up watching 4 short Anime series with a max of 26 episodes.

Now, there’s a lot I don’t like about Anime (at least the Anime I’ve seen previously). One, I noticed there tends to be a lot of gore or horrible looking creatures – they seem to go hand-in-hand. I’m not a big fan of that. Two, they repeat themselves a lot. I remember watching a movie called “The Guyver” or something like that. It seemed like every sentence the phrase “The Gyver” would be there – sometimes more than once! Both of those are still true in these 4 series that I’ve recently watched.

However, these shows (mostly) were entertaining anyway. For the most part, I liked the characters and the overall story lines.

I’ve most recently completed the series “Claymore”, about a group of women warriors who were created to battle evil monsters (remember my two peeves? gore and monsters). Despite its problems, I enjoyed the main character “Clair”. I find that she had enough character growth to keep me interested in the series.

Best Student Council didn’t have blood and gore, but, like the title suggests it was centered in a girls school and focused mainly on a new student… and her puppet. Probably one of the strangest shows I’ve ever seen. The first episode of this show was apparently a freebee on iTunes at some point. I downloaded it but never watched. One day, trying to clear out my library of junk, I decided to watch this thing before dumping it. What a mistake THAT was! It hooked me with its odd humor and then I was stuck watching the series…

Last Exile was one of those stories that’s set in the far future with high tech but much of the people live poorly with low tech. It focuses on two characters and their van ship (a 2-person transport) and their roles as people who deliver messages. I found after you get through the first few episodes, the show was quite entertaining and interesting.

Another show I watched was Tokko. A similar situation as Claymore – women with big swords killing a bunch of monsters. While it has its moments, I didn’t like it that much.

So my experience with the these short shows is not unusual for me: enjoyed the experience but ultimately disappointed by then end. Endings for me are usually disappointing – it’s hard to write an ending that satisfies me, and if I enjoyed the show, I’m disappointed that there IS an end. So these short series are great – over relatively quickly, but I’m often sad that they’re over.

If you’re like me, you have a lot invested in managing sources. For many years, I was an fan and heavily used Endnote. Over the years, however, the high cost of maintaining a license for Endnote (typically $99 per year) and how I use the application meant that the costs were increasing given how much I actually used the software. Eventually, new players hit the market. Zotero (a Firefox plugin), Papers (mac only), Mendeley and many other smaller players in the market began to appear. I started off working with Zotero. I really like Zotero. However, I liked the PDF viewing and management much better in Papers. That set up a problem for me… Papers to manage PDFs, but since Paper’s citation system left much to be desired, I kept using Zotero for the citations. Unfortunately, I’ve had to admit that this approach was untenable. Worse, I don’t yet see a good solution to resolve the problem.

Here are the few things I want

1) Good word processor integration. I think all three have varying levels of quality, so for now I’ll say this is even…
2) Manages PDF files will with a clear directory structure and file naming convention – Papers win this one. This is important if I have a copy of this stuff somewhere and want to navigate the files by hand.
3) Web browsing/Google Scholar integration – Zotero wins this
4) Nice interface – Papers/Mendeley
5) Clearly open source database – Zotero… Papers and Mendeley probably also use an open source db, but it’s not as clear in terms of access.
6) Mobile interfaces – all 3
7) Offline mobile interface – Papers and Mendeley… Zotero, IMO, suffers from GNU licensing models which actually prevents it’s use on iOS platforms, at least that’s my interpretation
capacity for spacial data – Zotero… This one is extremely important to me. As a geologist, I want the ability to embed spatial information that I can later tease out and use to make maps. Most of these apps could be used for this, but I find Zotero’s interface much more adaptable.

So, given the above, none of these solutions fit me perfectly. Indeed, unifying to any one of these apps will cost me in terms of time and, if I choose Papers at least, money. My sad conclusion is that I think I’ll have to unify my solution to Zotero. For my mobile needs, I think I’ll probably start using exporting from Zotero and importing into Mendeley. Sadly, I think I’ll have to cut Papers out despite it’s power.

Pyroclastic Flow, Unzen, Japan (Krafft)

pahoehoe in Hawaii

aa hawaii

pillow lava

St. Helens Eruption

Dalhousie, northern India 2011

Calabria, Italy, 16 Feb 2010

View Larger Map

Debris Flow: Clear Creek County, Colorado, Spring 2003

Liquefaction in New Zealand

Rock Slide in Tenn.

Japan 2004

Malaysia Tin Mine Disaster – slumping example

I was excited about iCloud.  I suppose I still am, to a degree.  However, I quickly figured out that you cannot count on iCloud as a backup solution for your apps and music.  Why?

I downloaded the beta iTunes 10.3 and began checking around.  In terms of music, I have somewhere around 700 purchases that are DRM’d alone.  However, right now the total number of songs available for me on iCloud is around 200.  If I assume they’re still building the database, then that might be okay.

In terms of apps, I have a little more than 320.  As far as I can tell, the iCloud database is complete as it will get, but not all of my apps are there.

What’s the lesson that I’m taking from this?

If the item is not available on the store, it will not be available on iCloud!

Yes, that’s right, many things I’ve purchased on the iTunes store are no longer available.  Hence, it’s not on iCloud.  Whether this will be also true for any post-iCloud purchases, I don’t know.  But it’s seems clear to me at this point that anything not currently in the store will not be available on iCloud.

For example, I purchased 4 King Crimson songs from the album THRAK!.  They are DRM’d acc files.  After I made that purchase, King Crimson objected to being on the store and were removed.  I still have my purchases, though.  I fully do not expect these song to be available on iCloud because the songs are still not available.

In the app store, Delicious Library was removed after my purchase.  In this case, it was removed for a complex set of reasons I won’t get into here.  However, it’s not on the store, and it’s not in iCloud.

So, what to do?  I will be quite difficult to figure out what’s on iCloud and what’s not.  Apps are split into iPhone/iPad lists and it’s impossible to figure out the exact count of apps because of the way it’s split.  I’m not sure how many people will take the time to figure out what’s available and what’s not.

So, iCloud is promising, but it has serious holes, or at least lack of clarity, in the area of the availability of past and future purchases.  Being able to download the files again is great news, for at least those files that are available.  But I don’t think most people will keep track of what you purchases and is not available.  Just back up everything.  While the iCloud logo looks a bit heavenly, it is not a safe solution for your purchases…

Over the last year or so, I’ve been interested my family’s genealogy.  It’s been quite the adventure.  Most of my mother’s side of the family has been done for some time, but my father’s side was largely unknown (and to a large extent, still unknown).   Much of my successes come from the relatively recent availability of online data, particularly census and marital records.

However, one data set has largely been unavailable – regional history.  Historical events are important in genealogy because it places your family in context with what was going on at the time.  Where there battles near where they lived?  Did they participate in events?  Did those events contribute to their struggles?  One of my goals I have with my genealogical records is not only to incorporate the data into GIS and animations, but also bring in historical data for context in maps.  I want to see how history impacted my family through time.  However, collecting historical data is hard.  Even if you have the time, determining what’s important and where the events occurred would be extremely difficult, particularly for several hundred years of history.

Interestingly, this problem may have been solved.  A BBC software engineer named Gareth Lloyd produced a unique database by accessing Wikipedia.  The database was compiled from Wikipedia pages that contained latitude and longitudes and dates.  Using this database, Mr. Lloyd produce a short animation of the historical event in map form (see here).   The database is now available via Google Fusion.  What this may mean is that it is now possible to integrate in some sort of GIS environment genealogical data AND historical data, at least those historical events that made it to Wikipedia.

Two drawbacks currently exist with these data, however.  First, I haven’t actually downloaded the data and put it into a GIS yet.  Second, I haven’t derived an approach to do the same with my genealogical data either. Thus, right now, this is still a pipe-dream.  Third, it’s unclear that these data will be updated regularly.  It looks like this project was extremely large to assemble and wouldn’t be easy for someone with bandwidth caps to replicate.    Updating these data would be important over the years, but I don’t see a clear approach for this right now.

In the end, if the practical  problems can be worked out, then I think these data are very important for genealogical research.  We’ll have to wait see what happens.

I’m one of those people always on the fence when it comes to open source software.  Sure, the idea is great, but when it comes to using it… well, I’m often disappointed.

Case in point: I’m trying to install GnuCash on my mac(s).  There are installations that are easy, but they come relatively limited, particularly in terms of file formats.  GnuCash can support nice database systems like mysql or postgres rather than just the original XML format.  I want that capability.  So, I try to compile the code required to add that support.  No joy.  Grrr.  So, I decided to go with the MacPorts install…  hours ago… I’m still waiting for all of the compiles of dependencies.  The process so far has stopped 3 times on failures.  It’s rather ridiculous.  I’m sure someone would say “If you just used linux it wouldn’t be a problem”.  Sure, you’re likely to be successful installing and probably more quickly on linux, but I don’t like linux very much.  I’ll use it when I have to.

So, when I complain about linux, I’ll have to remember to add the whole issue of dependencies.  I usually gripe about things like UI, which most people see right away.  However, the dependencies issue turns me off very quickly.   Let’s face it, the dependencies issue won’t go away.  You could argue that’s the linux philosophy, but I suspect it’s really the Gnu OSS licensing making this stuff crazy.  Let’s face it, open source software really isn’t free.  Most OSS software  comes with restrictions.  I’m often willing to abide by these restrictions as a user because I really don’t have to think about them.  However, if I understand the licensing (and I freely admit I don’t understand the licensing that well) there is a strong disincentive to compile  and distribute the software, statically linked to it’s dependencies, as one big app.  Thus, you’re stuck with installing dependencies that might or might not be compatible with the application you’re really trying to build.  So, part of the cost of OSS is dealing with these kinds of issues.

Despite this complaining, the cost of OSS (and it’s more than just dependencies) is sometimes worth it.  Some OSS software I use often are QuantumGIS and Zotero (I probably use far more than that, particularly in terms of libraries).  I’m hoping that GnuCash fits in this category of being “worth it”.

What I’m hoping with GnuCash is that I have sort of an in-house common financial record system.  Right now, I use GnuCash for my business accounting, but I’m wanting to shift away from Quicken for our personal work.  We have a really old version of Quicken and I can’t justify in my mind the cost of upgrading, particularly since it doesn’t do the job the way I need to use it.  In particular, it seems unsafe to use a Quicken file across a network connection.  That always scares me with Quicken.  My hope is that getting GnuCash working with Postgres or Mysql that sort of thing would be safer.   I understand it’s still not safe for two people to use at the same time, but that’s okay.  I want a safer and robust approach that my wife might be willing to use.

ah finally, it’s done.

UPDATE

Bah, humbug.  All that work for nothing.  Apparently, my installed version of Postgres is incompatible with libdbi.  Geez!

Well, as usual, I’m behind on last years accounting and tax time is rapidly approaching.  I finally sat down and at least sorted my receipts saved from last year.  Now I’m faced with the horrible data entry phase.

Now, I was able to download all the transaction records from the bank.  That’s all well and good, but it doesn’t have any of the information I really require except the amounts.  Even the payees are primarily transaction number that are barely readable.

As usual, I decided to see what’s out there and available to help with taking a QIF file and make it useful.  I found one or two things for the Mac, but they were pricey for what they do.  However, I suddenly remembered that last year I made a solution to do exactly what I needed (How could I have forgotten??).

If you poke around the net, you can find a python script to read and write QIF files (thanks to whoever wrote that!).   Thus, that is part one of the solution, the ability to read and write QIF files.

Part 2 of the solution is SQLite.  Sqlite is a great low-overhead SQL database system.  Works great with python.  In sqlite, then you can build a list of expected transaction information.  My table is fairly simple:

Name: the name of the transaction as I’d like it to appear

qifname: the partial name of the transaction as it appears in my QIF file.  For example, Netflix appears as “WWW.NETFLI”

Category: the optional assignment of a category if it’s fairly consistent.

Part 3 is a custom python script that incorporates the QIF read and writes, checks the database for each transaction against the SQLite database for the qifname, if it’s found, replaces the transaction name with name and addes the category when present.

Simple, free, and powerful.  Hours of work saved.

Well, my Drobo is up and running again.  All my data appears in tact.  Wonderful!  Now we go merrily along like nothing happened, right? Not quite.

Today, I have the backup bug.  The backup bug is a wonderful thing.  Simply put, I have the incredible urge to back everything up.  Make multiple copies of everything I don’t want to lose and securely distribute those copies out into the universe where, one day, I might call on them to resurrect themselves.  Yeah!

I also know  something about the backup bug: it will go away quickly.  Today my data are safe, and they’ll probably be safe tomorrow.  I can put it off for a couple days while I resolve other priorities.  Days will become weeks and weeks will become an unknown amount of time until my next hard drive failure.  It will come.

When that hard drive failure comes again, and it will, I’ll be kicking myself, fixing the problem and hopefully moving on with minimal data damage, but with a huge loss of time.  While I probably will have minimal loses, it’s still a waste.  With 2 TB hard drives getting down to as little as $100 these days, it’s cheaper to buy a bunch and consistently backup rather than lose a couple days fixing the problem.  It’s a hard lesson to learn.

What really kills off my backup bug is organization.  I have the space to properly backup, particularly today.  However, the question because what and how to backup.  I don’t want to backup everything, just those things that are not adequately backed up.  I have several categories for my data:

1. Active  - Active data are those things I’m actively modifying.  Writing projects, for example.  These require constant backup.

2. Inactive – Formerly active projects that are retired.  I may want them on my computer or server, but they only need multiple static copies.

3. Configuration – those files that are used to configure my computer – the OS, for example.  These, like Active projects, should be constantly backed up but not necessarily in the same place.

4. Replaceable – if the files are not really mine, like an application disk image, and can be reacquired generally shouldn’t be backed up, unless they are no longer available.

5. Temporary – judgement call – once it’s backed up, it might be around for a really long time.

In any case, none of my files are organized this well… I should probably get to it if I’m going to get anything before the backup bug goes away.